


so this is how it is

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Dealing with PTSD, Gen, because Sam Wilson is a badass, fixing the broken things, post-winter-soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1462975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the events of the Winter Soldier film, Steve and Sam finally find Bucky, and work to get back to a good place.</p><p>-Gen, fix-it; the graphic violence warning is in anticipation of possible flashbacks to bad things that happened in the past, later on.-</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sam

It's almost summer when Steve finds Bucky again. In the interim Sam has followed Captain America across the country (literally) and halfway back again, mostly on foot. On the day they find Bucky in particular, the air is oppressively humid, sucking the joy out of the world around them. Pale clouds with no obvious intention to actually rain coat the sky like a fine layer of persistent lint, and they are in Texas, heading towards Houston.

There's nothing special about it, no reason why that day should be the day, yet there it is.

It goes like this: they stop in a diner for breakfast. Sam Wilson has grown sick of diners, if he ever liked them to begin with. In places like this particular patch of Texas, he gets fearful and angry looks just for walking in the door, even with someone as upstandingly white-looking as Steve Rogers. Sam doesn't appreciate the looks or the nasty things said under the quiet rumblings of conversation through the diner, but he doesn't comment on it. The first time, he did. They ended up kicked out of the restaurant and in hiding for a few days, while Sam tried to explain to Steve why picking fights in public was neither productive nor acceptable, and Steve tried to understand why Sam would tolerate people treating him that way.

For Steve, the diners are a mimicry of a slice of the past. For Sam, they're just bland and mildly unpleasant, with a very few exceptions. After their conversation and confessional, after Steve promised Sam that he'd be more alert to that sort of harassment in the future, they'd agreed to keep to brightly lit places where there was a little safety in numbers, intimidation.

Steve also tends to let the talking fall to Sam with regards to the hosts and hostesses, standing close enough to warn people off of picking a fight with Sam and glowering around at everyone assembled. This has the side-effect of making Steve look like a jealous boyfriend or a stoic bodyguard and continually amuses Sam, so he hasn't complained about it. Sam smiles charmingly at the hostess, who asks them how many. Two? Sam says yes, and when the waiter shows them over and hands them menus, Steve stuffs his too-tall self into the little chair, and silently begins to read it.

This is one of those things where they have learned to let each other go through the motions. Sam is unimpressed with diner fare but respects its efficiency. He never bothers reading the menus; when the waiter arrives, he asks what the special is for whatever time of day it is, and orders that, along with coffee if it's late and he's tired, or water if it's not.

Sam also lets the waiter know to come back when Steve puts down the menu and that he'll be ready then, and then they settle into silence. He goes along with this because he recognizes that it's a coping mechanism for the culture shock. Steve reads the whole menu every time, doling out a few seconds for each and every item on it, even if he's been to the restaurant before, just in case. It usually takes about fifteen minutes, which means Sam has his drink (water because it's mid morning) and his food will be out in a minute, if that.

Despite the time invested, Steve ends up ordering a variation on the same meal he orders everywhere. Eggs. Sausage. Shortstack. Orange juice.

This time, scrambled eggs. (Last time it was sunny side up.) Four sausage links instead of the usual two. A full shortstack. A full carafe of orange juice, because he's thirsty.

Steve eats like a truck guzzles gas. Steve is generally slightly alarming in this and many other ways. Sam wonders how the hell Steve functioned before Sam inadvertently signed on to be his live-in counselor, but he gets it, too.

He thinks probably Steve couldn't relax before and put up fronts for everybody around him. He _likes_ to think that Steve lets those things show because he's got Sam. It makes these moments feel like trust, instead of like trouble.

It's not until Sam's finished his food and Steve's halfway through it that they hear the ruckus. There's someone standing in the road, and a semi just swerved out of the way to avoid him, injuring the driver. Steve looks up immediately, like Sam knew he would, and swallows his bite of eggs. "We should go see if he needs help," Steve says, in that worried undertone that means he's two seconds from just doing it. For the first week, whenever something like this happened, Sam would find himself suddenly alone, frequently at an overturned table, while Steve rushed off to check on whoever was in trouble. Progress. They are definitely making progress.

"You finish your food," Sam admonishes, as he's standing up. "I'll go see what's up. Meet you outside?"

Steve downs another glass of orange juice, and grins wryly. "I'll foot the bill. Meet you there."

The truck driver has gotten out of his truck and, though he has a wrenched shoulder, appears to be fine. Their mystery pedestrian, though-- Sam has a feeling, even before he breaks through the crowd to the woman who'd escorted the guy off of the road, that this is finally it, that it's him.

It is.

The guy is bundled up like it's cold; looks hunted and hungry and confused, and doesn't seem to understand when the woman who's holding his right hand asks him if he's hurt.

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Sam flashes a smile and looks worriedly at the guy Steve has told him is Bucky Barnes. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"Uh, yeah, he was out in the road. Walking, I guess. I know I saw someone kind of dressed like this a few miles back when I first came in, I figure it's the same guy. Fred says he was just standing in the middle of the road here, though." She winces at Bucky, shrugs at Sam. Her grip on Bucky's hand is tight enough to clue Sam in to the obvious-- Bucky looks like he's placid but he would be running away if she didn't have that iron grip on his hand. He tugs lightly at it while Sam is watching, even though his face remains that blank, gentle expression it was when he walked up.

"Sounds pretty bad," Sam says, mostly to stall while he tries to figure out how to extract Bucky from the crowd without drawing attention to Steve. Steve's still kind of sort of fugitive. Bringing attention to him is the last thing that Sam wants to do. "You know what, I work at the VA with victims of PTSD. I'm not sure if our friend here was in the service, but he has the look, you know?"

The woman nods in agreement, but her attention is on Sam now. He keeps his on Bucky. "Is there anything you can do for him?"

"Well, I'm passing through town, but I'm sure the local doctor would have safe facilities to at least check and see if he's got any injuries. I can take him there, if he's not obviously injured from the road."

The woman looks unsure; so does Bucky, who's staring at Sam now. He responds in a small, soft voice, "I don't want to go."

By now the crowd's thinning out. People seem to have concluded that Sam and the woman are handling the mystery guy, and the trucker's taken up someone else's offer to buy him breakfast and stormed inside the diner. Sam and the woman trade concerned looks, and he holds up his hands in an attempt to convey his intent to do no harm. "You don't want to go with me, or you don't want to go to the doctor?"

Bucky squints at Sam and recognition flares after a moment, though it seems to come with further confusion. He tugs on the hand the woman is gripping again, this time hard enough to make her stumble, but he doesn't try to hurt her and he doesn't run away. "I don't want to go to the doctor."

Sam glances at the woman, then at Bucky, and then the situation is taken forcibly out of his hands. He grimaces at the steely sound of Steve's voice, sees plain as day how it makes the confusion worse when Bucky suddenly stops trying to run and stares over Sam's shoulder.

"Then you don't have to. He's not injured, so there shouldn't be a problem."

Steve smiles at the woman, reaching out to silently ask her to pass Bucky's hand over to him. She loosens her grip, and he takes Bucky firmly by the wrist. "Thank you so much, miss...?"

"LaVell," she answers automatically, smiling up at Steve, then Sam. Sam can tell when she puts it all together, and shrugs at her incredulous look. "Do- do you fellas need a ride?"

Bucky doesn't answer; looks at Steve's hand on his wrist like he hates it, like he's afraid of it, like he's grateful for it.

Before Sam can say yeah, they do, Steve has already answered for them. "No, we've got our own. Thank you again, miss LaVell. We can help him from here."

She wants to ask who Bucky is, Sam thinks, but doesn't; instead she bravely counters, "You look pretty dusty for a guy who says he's got a ride."

Sam likes her.

"You sure I can't give you a lift to the nearest town?" She smiles at Sam, perhaps because he's the least unreal of the three of them. Sam smiles back, and looks hopefully at Steve.

"Well--"

"Come on, what's the harm?" Sam cajoles.

Steve's expression is cautious, and he glances from Bucky to LaVell with obvious mistrust. While Sam doubts she's a remnant of SHIELD or HYDRA, he can't blame the guy.

"Come on, just to the next town. Then I'll let you force march us all over Kentucky, all right?"

LaVell snorts. Steve seems ready to say no again, but stops himself and sighs, offering up a plaintive, "Better for the digestion to walk. I read."

They take the ride on up to Houston, which is fortunately quite large and more to Sam's taste than some places in Texas, and find a cheap motel as fast as possible. The drive is mostly Sam learning about LaVell's life (and her girlfriend, and their adopted son Jake, and the fact that her first name is Rhonda, and that she's currently taking night courses on her days off to eventually become a paralegal). Sam gives her Maria Hill's old number, tells her to call Maria up if she ever needs a favor.

Bucky and Steve are so silently dangerous crammed together in the seats to Sam's right that he can feel the tension humming in Steve's shoulders.

Checking into the motel is a relief. Sam tells them both that he'll see them later, and offers to pay LaVell back by buying her lunch. This isn't Sam's business; the part after will be, but this isn't something he wants a part of. He takes the spare card key, jokes that Steve and Bucky had better be there when he gets back, and worries for the rest of the afternoon that they won't.


	2. Bucky

He's been looking since the crash.

What for, he isn't wholly certain. He isn't really sure who he is, except that he isn't anybody people recognize on the street.

He learned fast to cover up the metal arm that he doesn't know how to maintenance so people wouldn't know it was metal. In the interest of keeping people from realizing that it's fully functional, he lets it swing at his side so that it seems like a simple prosthetic. Most people assume this is why he isn't working, hasn't got anywhere to live.

He left the man from the bridge on the shore, because (I'm with you to the end of the line)

\--he is with the man from the bridge here, now. Captain America. Steve Rogers. They should mean things to him, the words, the name, but they're ghosts in the ether of a world he left behind. He has purposefully gone to the places he was before. He went first to the museum where he once was given a mission to kill a janitor who had the potential to rally an activist change in the treatment of the poor. ZOLA had determined this to be suboptimal for HYDRA's plans. And he-- whoever he is-- he was the axe that came down on the janitor.

The museum had had an exhibit on Captain America. On the whole platoon, even on Bucky Barnes. (Bucky--!)

He doesn't remember how he left the museum, but he knows he was shaking when he came to, and cold and terrified.

He went to the grassy hill where he shot a president once.

He went to the small house where he silenced a peaceful man.

He went to the slightly larger house where he silenced a preacher.

He went to where he'd appeared to terrorize a man suffering from delusions of oppression into murdering the women at a local school.

There is a path of murder across the entirety of North America. He has been to many countries, and he has ruined nearly all of them for the last century. The part of him that (don't make me do this) knows that he _ruined them_.

The part of him that doesn't know who he is knows that it was the mission and he did what he was supposed to do, and when he came back he knew nothing again.

When he ran out of places to go he spent a week in the rain following a river south until he reached the sea. He followed the sea to the border; was driven back by border guards who assumed he was a refugee and shot at him.

He isn't sure how they got here, not exactly. The man who travels with the man from the bridge-- the winged man-- found him, he knows that much.

Captain America. Steve Rogers.

"Bucky," the man says, like he wanted to say that the whole time they were driving here, like he didn't because he didn't want to share that name with just anybody, like he knows more than 'Bucky' does. Does he have a name? Nobody has asked him for a mission report. He supposes there's nobody left. He looked for them when he finished his mission. (He didn't finish his mission. The man from the bridge is standing right here.) He had never failed a mission before. He had been afraid of what they would do if he failed, and still is, a little.

He knows he should answer, but he doesn't know what to say. He ends up waiting for more; they're standing at opposite ends of the room, he is by the door and the man from the bridge is by the other door, the bathroom door, where he rinsed his face.

"Bucky," he says again, softer, and his voice quavers like it did in the ship.

"Who are you?" The question surprises them both (horrifies Steve Rogers), but he needs to know. He needs to sit down. He leans against the door instead. "Captain America," he intones, quietly, remembering the posters. "I saw--"

He shakes his head. Steve looks-- frozen, which is awful, and makes 'Bucky' panic a little, thinking of the creeping cold and the fear and how it feels to watch the world disappear into a coat of frost. 

"They had pictures of me, too," he tries again, though his voice fades in and out on him, like a radio signal part jammed, "Right? Because I'm supposed to be Bucky."

He shouldn't know or care about the pain on that so-familiar face, the way it's painted in hope and crushed defeat simultaneously, but he knows he was the cause, that something he did just now killed some of that man over there, who he was supposed to kill in total. Mission failed; but he hasn't checked in yet, so perhaps he's still supposed to kill the man from the bridge after all, perhaps it doesn't matter who he is, or that they were friends, once.

"Yes," Steve says, sounding resigned. "You're supposed to be Bucky."

He accepts this because he doesn't have any other name, and nods, looking around the room for exits to this conversation, since he and Steve have the physical, non-window ones covered.

They're at an impasse. Steve actually does sit down; just quietly and gracefully folds his enormous self up and sits on the edge of one of the beds in here, looking like he still isn't sure what to say.

Bucky stays by the door. He doesn't want to get closer, risk being touched, and he really can't shake the persistent and unsettling feeling that he must be ready at any moment to run away.

He's looking at his feet when Steve's voice breaks the silence again. "You saved me, back there. Why didn't you stick around?"

He shakes his head, not looking up, barely shrugging his shoulders. "...went to report on the mission. Nobody there, so I went to places I knew."

Steve's fist hits the bedsheets with a soft but sharp sound like a bullet shredding cloth, and Bucky looks up, tense and ready to fight, defensive. Instead he just finds Steve looking indignant.

"I looked for you everywhere we ever went together that wasn't in Europe, Bucky. You-" He falters, looking heartbroken enough that Bucky feels sorry for not being where Steve was looking for him. "You weren't there."

"I--don't remember those places," Bucky says, carefully. "I went to places I had been for missions."

The realization and disgusted horror on Steve's face aren't better. Bucky looks away.

"I'm supposed to kill you," he admits, because he has been thinking about it, because he's still worried this is a test and when he returns to base they'll wipe him again or worse. He doesn't even want to know what worse is, but he knows there's always something.

To his surprise, Steve just laughs a wry, unhappy little laugh. When he sees Bucky's confusion, he explains himself. "Is that why you came with us? So you could finish your mission?"

"I don't know."

"Bucky, look at me. Are you planning to kill me?"

"I don't know!" Steve still hasn't suggested he'll fight back if Bucky tries, which means they're back on that ship and it's going to be the same all over again. That thing Steve had said then-- no, Bucky can't do it either. Steve can't do it (could, chooses not to), Bucky can't do it. The mission's a failure, he's sure of that. "I don't want to," he says, miserably, because it's the best offering he can make.

"Well, at least that's something," Steve says, sounding surprised but hopeful. He stands up then, crosses the room, hesitating when he sees Bucky tensing for a fight. "Look, you haven't washed in ages, you smell it, and I want to make sure you're okay."

"I shot you," Bucky answers, lost for words. "Three times."

Steve makes a face, and offers Bucky a hand, not touching him but not backing down, either. "Luckily, someone took me to a hospital. I'm gonna guess nobody did that for you."

Bucky shakes his head. He can feel his blood pounding in his ears at the thought of Steve in a hospital. "Did-- did they hurt you?" he asks in a jumble, grabbing Steve's arm at the bicep, his other shoulder, trying not to squeeze too hard.

He shouldn't care. He can't be sure the half-memories he has are real but he's so _sure_ that he knew Steve, before-- before. And the possibility of Steve or anyone he cares about going through what he went through is horrific. He can't stand the thought--

"No," Steve is grimacing with pain but Bucky can't make himself let go, not until Steve pries him off, putting hands on _his_ shoulders to steady him. "No, they were really good to me and I had some friends there-- like Sam, by the way-- who were looking out for me while I got better."

Bucky doubts the veracity of all that, but he nods and accepts it anyway. Steve seems fine, at least, so he is able to relax, to swallow the panic down. "Okay."

"Bucky?"

He doesn't like hearing his name because it feels fake, but he lets Steve stare into his eyes searchingly.

"Can we get you cleaned up?" Steve nods to Bucky's metal arm. "Will that be okay in the shower?"

Bucky's been submerged in water with his arm running and it didn't even give him a static shock. And Bucky knows shocks very well. He nods, and lets Steve maneuver him across the room, into the tiny bathroom and its surprisingly decently sized bath and shower.

"Okay, strip out of those," Steve sighs, in obvious regret for the unsalvageable quality of Bucky's clothes. "You can borrow some of my spares until we get you something new."

Bucky stands in the doorway to the bathroom, eyeing the shower stall and saying nothing. When Steve realizes he's not getting undressed either, he makes a strange face and asks,

"What is it?"

"Nothing," Bucky says, and shucks his hoodie and his three shirts (each messier than the last; the third is blood encrusted and definitely the most foul), unzips his pants and steps out of those, too.

Naked, he feels slightly more vulnerable; but if Steve were to change his mind and start fighting Bucky now, Bucky could still overpower him, so he doesn't worry too much about it.

Steve is staring, though, at Bucky's body. Not as if he likes what he sees, or even as if he were envious, which Bucky remembers from a dream or something equally misty and probably false. Like everything else, he seems horrified by the state of Bucky's body, and stares for a lengthy amount of time at the clusters of scars on Bucky's right arm (needle marks from dozens of operations), the even cuts along his thighs that look like teeth marks from a gigantic animal (a security door had closed on his leg during a job once, left him perforated and limping and he had been beaten for it when he came back because it left DNA evidence-- not wiped, though, because it was untraceable, because he was too old, too dead to be in the system).

Uncomfortable, he steps into the shower, waiting for Steve to tell him what else to do. He's not sure why he expects orders from the man he was supposed to kill, but it seems easier to accept a new source of orders than to try to decide on his own. Steve wants him to wash, so he'll wash exactly as much as he's asked to do.

"Do-" Steve sounds weak and his voice breaks at first. "Do you need anything else, or can you take it from here?"

He gives it serious thought.

"Shampoo?" he asks, after looking for it and finding nothing to use as soap or shampoo in this part of the bathroom. Steve silently steps out, retrieving a paper-wrapped bar of soap and a tiny container with coconut scented shampoo in it.

"There you go," Steve tries to keep his tone light, but still looks obviously shaken. He is staring at Bucky's arm now, and seems unable to stop himself from asking. "Did it.” He stops; starts again, trying a different tack. “Did they put you to sleep for the arm, at least?"

This is not what he expected Steve to ask, but Bucky realizes that in this one case, the answer might bring peace of mind, and for that he's grateful. "I woke up and it was there," he says. It’s true. He just omits the other pieces and lies: "That's all I remember."

Steve nods, once, twice, and turns to leave the bathroom. "I'll be here when you're done. I'm going to take out the old clothes."

Bucky waits; hears the door open and close; considers his options.

He could leave. He could run. He could avoid having to see that face and remember these very tiny things (mostly feelings, not even really memories), and look for HYDRA and forget about Steve.

Instead, he turns on the water, and stands in the spray until he hears the door again, hears Steve call out to him 'Bucky, I'm back, okay? I'll be here when you're done' and the sound of one of the beds creaking and settling.

He soaps up his hair and his skin and he rinses it off. And again. And again, until the little shampoo bottle is empty.

He showers until the water runs cold.

He still doesn't feel clean; but he does feel _better_ when he finally turns the water off, staggers out into the main room with one of the too-small towels wrapped around his waist, and finds Steve casually pretending to nap on one of the beds.

"How was the shower?" Steve asks, when Bucky transfers the towel to his hair, trying to dry it as quickly as possible.

He doesn't have to think about his answer. Better still, he doesn't have to lie: "Good."


	3. Steve

Since waking up in the middle of the modern world, disoriented, solitary, disgusted, disillusioned and betrayed and worst of all, worst of everything, completely alive, Steve has been trying to make restitution to the dead. He did that by agreeing to help SHIELD; by making publicity appearances in a couple of places to get the opportunity to meet the descendants of those who seem, to him, to have suddenly died, those for whom he is still in shock and grieving over. SHIELD was never Steve's style-- he still doesn't understand the value of doing things the way that Nick Fury does them, not exactly-- but they seemed honest and they were good at what they did and they even had a few good people in their ranks. Steve worked for them, relied on them, to give him more of what he needed, more means of paying his debt to the world that he had abandoned, let crumble in his absence through inaction.

It's arrogant to think like that, which is what Peggy's nurse had told him the first time he visited, the first time he broke her heart by being alive, by making all her suffering over him fresh and new like a wound. When the nurse had come to see what was wrong she'd scolded him for the selfishness of telling a woman suffering from dementia that he was who he was when it could only bring her sorrow. Steve didn't recognize the sorrow at first, thought it must have been happiness; but he's been back a hundred times, and when he doesn't say who he is, Peggy is so much happier until she recognizes his face, remembers him, falls into shock and pain again. He can see the difference now, and he knows it's cruel but at least she forgets, and the nurse-- though she scoffed at Steve's continued visits-- seemed to understand that it was himself Steve wanted to punish, not Peggy.

He lived; he should be dead. Survivor's guilt, one of the agents at SHIELD had said, trying to strike up a conversation with him, maybe make him seek help or analyze him or even help him, who knows. Steve had simply accepted the diagnosis, refused to act on it, and moved on with his life.

He'd like to think he can do that-- move on-- but he's been realizing, bit by bit, that remaining alone, intentionally isolating himself, has not helped him do anything but linger in maudlin detail over what was, what can never be now, what he's lost. Befriending Sam Wilson might not have amounted to much if Steve had been allowed to leave it at the casual rivalry he thought it would be, but he's glad it's turned out so differently from his expectations.

Befriending the Black Widow was not something he really thought possible, but here he is, still receiving texts from her from time to time.

If he could accept that he has to let go of the past to move on, then these friends in the present might be enough to support him while he found his feet. After the unpleasant discovery of HYDRA's dregs lingering in SHIELD, Steve had found himself back at square one, wanting to repay the people who had trusted him to rout evil and notice corruption in time to stop it. He needed to find some way to make it up to the civilians whose lives had been endangered-- and through history, been lost while he slept-- because of his failure. If only it was so easy. Those already dead and lost were beyond saving, beyond his clumsy attempts at apologies and amends. 

One of those people Steve could never have made restitution to was Bucky. And yet how fate has cruelly tipped the scales, because here Bucky is.

Alive.

He has no idea where to start. This is Bucky, yes, but it's also so patently NOT Bucky that Steve is left foundering, helpless and unsure. Between the two of them he's sure Bucky is a lot moreso, and even showered and dressed in Steve's spares Bucky continues to look out of his depth, as if he keeps waiting for the dream to end, the strange dream where his name is Bucky and Steve knows him from somewhere before all this, the dream where he doesn't live his life by his mission like a drone.

Talking to Bucky is like nailing his own hand to the wall.

"So," he says, watching Bucky fiddling with his metal arm. "How does that work?"

Bucky shakes his head, frowning down at the gears he is struggling with. "I don't know."

"Is it damaged?"

"I don't think so?"

Steve sighs, and Bucky looks up at him quickly, still tense as a wild animal and about as likely to bolt, from the look of him. Since showering Bucky has not moved from the second bed, so Steve remains on the first, mostly so that Bucky will feel comfortable to relax if he needs to.

"You were injured pretty badly in the crash," he tries instead, even though it's been months and, obviously, Steve was in worse shape than Bucky when all was said and done. "Are you feeling okay now?"

Bucky's eyes are wild and barely recognize Steve, as if he only knows Steve from the bridge, from the rooftop, as if they never met before that moment. "I don't know?"

He doesn't like how everything is a question; doesn't like the way that Bucky seems to be giving the answers he thinks Steve wants to hear. He decides to try to be more direct, though everything tells him not to push. Steve has never been good at gauging when to stop if things get personal. "Why don't you want to go see a doctor, Bucky?"

Silence; terror-stricken silence. Bucky doesn't even breathe.

"I know you're afraid," Steve pushes a little harder. "I think I know _why_ you're afraid, but you have to realize that the people who did this to you-- that HYDRA is not in control of every hospital or doctor."

Bucky looks at him like he's lost his mind.

Gritting his teeth, Steve tries one more time. "Bucky-- I don't know what to do for you if you don't--"

"I'm not hurt," Bucky says, but his voice is shivering, he's curled up tight and on his side on the bed, facing away from Steve, now. "I'm not hurt. I don't need to see a doctor."

It doesn't stop until Steve finally says, "Okay."

Doesn't really stop until he says,

"Okay, I won't make you, Buck. I'm just worried."

"I know." There's an old tiredness there. Bucky doesn't move. "I'm sorry I make you worry."

Feeling the finality of the conversation, and the sense of loss of purpose, Steve turns to the nightstand between the beds, considering the remote. He says, "It all right if I turn on the TV for a while?"

"Sure."

They don't talk until Sam comes back; Sam comes back bearing food, which means he kicks the door to knock, and greets them both with a cheery hello and six bags of take-out from McDonald's balanced between both hands. "I got you sodas, too, but they're back at the car. Did I mention I got us a rental? Rhonda was nice enough to put it in her name and I paid her back for the cost. We can drop it off anywhere that has an Enterprise, they said, since we might be goin' pretty far."

"Whoa! Okay. Uh--?" Steve takes on some of the bags and carefully moves them to the cramped little table in the corner of the room by the air conditioner-slash-heating unit. "A rental car?"

Sam shoots him a dry look. "What, you still wanna hoof it everywhere? 'Cause I will tell you this, I wouldn't mind gettin' to drive for a bit."

Bucky has noticed that there is food from the crinkling and the vague but delicious smell of "definitely some burgers" and "also french fries en masse" that emanates from the bags. He sits up on the bed, looking curiously at Sam, then at Steve, patient but silent. The picture of him makes Steve think of a whining dog, which makes him uncomfortable; when his stomach grumbles, Steve wants to throw the food at Bucky and demand that he eat everything immediately, but Sam swoops in before he can.

"Bucky! Is it okay if I call you Bucky? Do you want me to call you something else?" It hadn't even occurred to Steve to ask, but he's startled to see the tentative nod that Bucky responds with.

"Bucky's fine."

"You look hungry, man. Want one of these? I'm gonna run down and get the sodas, but this bag's all yours, all right?"

Sam hands the bag brimming with french fries and at least two burgers to Bucky, who takes it reverently, looking back up as Sam turns to depart. "What should I do?"

"If you're hungry, you can eat that. You don't have to if you don't like it, I got some salads too, okay?" Sam winks, claps Steve on the shoulder, and is back out of the motel room in no time at all. Steve is left thunderstruck by his passing, by the revelation that Steve really has no idea how to deal with Bucky, how to _help_ him like Sam can, because Bucky picks through the bag with interest. He takes out one container of fries, tries one, and sets the bag down, focusing on just the fries, for now. Steve is hungry, should reasonably be doing the same thing.

He finds himself still watching Bucky eat by the time Sam gets back.

Sam notices, and immediately forces Steve to redirect his attention by giving him one of the sodas. "Hey, tone it down a little, okay? Nobody likes bein' stared at like a zoo exhibit. Bucky, you want this one or this one? You can try 'em both if you like." He holds out two other sodas, the salads still strung on his wrist (two of them, each in a weird oblong bag because of the shape of the plastic container), and Bucky looks at the color before choosing the one that's brown. This leaves Sam with an orange soda, but he doesn't seem to feel anything but glad about it.

Bucky still asks. "Is this all right?"

"Absolutely," Sam says, reassuring but not patronizing-- or insulting, Steve realizes. "I like Coke and Fanta equally. How's the fries?"

Bucky seems surprised, but continues to respond, even as he eats another of the fries. (Steve can't stop himself from watching, despite Sam's good advice. Steve's food is barely touched.) "I like them." He takes a sip of his drink, and closes his eyes and smiles.

It's only when Sam says, "Good choice, Bucky," that Steve realizes they both had the same reaction, they both held their breath, they both were just as startled. He tries to look away, busies himself with eating, but it feels tasteless and bland to him. He can't tell why Bucky is enthusiastic about a soda-- just a soda-- or the french fries he eats without ketchup, he can't understand why Sam talks up the quarter pounder he's offering before he insists Bucky try it.

Bucky does that same thing with the burger. Closes his eyes, smiles. When he opens them he's crying, and he starts apologizing, a torrent of frightened apologies.

Sam says, "It's okay. No, man, it's fine. I'm really glad you like it."

Bucky smiles again, and Steve wishes he knew how to make that happen, because it gives him hope he thought was dead. "Thank you," Bucky says, and takes another bite.

Dinner is like that, and after dinner Steve takes out the trash because Sam asks him to, even though he's afraid to leave Sam alone in the room with Bucky. Sam is good, but he's not as strong as Steve and Bucky could still very easily kill Steve with that arm of his. He walks as quickly as he can out to the dumpster, and jogs back to the room, feeling the phantom of a nightmare close at his heels, worrying about the grisly carnage he could find when he gets back. He thinks about dogs turning on their masters, abused dogs that didn't know better when they were rescued, and he throws the door open rather more dramatically than he should.

Bucky is asleep; Sam is watching television with the sound low, and makes a face at Steve for slamming the door.

It doesn't seem to matter; Bucky doesn't budge, save the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest. Steve closes the door behind himself much more gently, and sits down on the bed with Sam in silent but mutual agreement that they'll let Bucky have the other bed to himself, considering the very likely possibility that he'll have nightmares and might kick (or worse).

"Hey," Sam says, and Steve is startled to realize he's still staring at Bucky, anxiously watching him while he sleeps. He has a lot of questions he knows he doesn't want the answers to.

"Thanks for dinner. And-- to answer your earlier question, I'm fine with the car."

"Glad to hear it," the look he receives is chiding, and Sam continues, "you okay, though? I know this is rough on you."

He settles deeper into the bed, making a moue of getting ready to sleep. "We found Bucky," Steve answers, sharp and defensive. "I'm definitely okay."

"Oh, good," Sam sniffs wryly, "'Cause I was worried you were human and maybe, I don't know, freaking out a little tiny bit."

For a long time, neither of them says anything. The commercial break ends, and the police drama Sam was watching resumes. Steve doesn't look at the TV, but he listens to it for a bit.

Eventually, the episode concludes. The criminal suspect professes innocence, and the detectives on the case share concern-- doubt that maybe they grabbed the wrong person.

As the credits are playing, Steve says, "I _am_ human."

Sam looks at him, but waits, says nothing.

"I don't know what to do. I don't-- I can't fight someone to fix this. Bucky needs someone who can help him." Steve nods to himself, and ventures a look at Sam, worrying that he'll find scorn. All he sees is compassion. "Thank you. Thank you for doing what I don't know how to do."

Sam smiles wryly back. "Hey, if you pay attention, you just might pick some of it up. But no worries."

"Hm."

A talk show comes on, and Sam changes the channel twice, three times before settling on the AMC. They’re playing Casablanca, which is soothing in its familiarity, and may or may not be intentional on Sam's part. Steve drifts to sleep while Sam is watching the movie, feeling oddly safe knowing that someone else is still awake, will still be keeping an eye on Bucky in case he needs anything.

The night passes without harm.


	4. Sam

Close to four in the morning, Sam's awakened unexpectedly from his uncomfortable sitting position on the edge of the bed by a distant sound like gunfire. He groans at a stiff neck and the vague sensation that he hasn't gotten enough sleep yet. It's not pretty, but Sam pushes himself to keep awake long enough to at least figure out what woke him in the first place, and forces his eyes open against the pervasive desire to leave them shut.

Rolling his shoulder, he blinks blearily around the dark room, checking to see that everything's where it should be. Steve, sleeping deeply to his right. The television, chattering softly as an episode of the Twilight Zone plays. Bucky--

Bucky is awake too, and staring at Sam like he got caught trying to sneak out. It's certainly a possibility, though Sam doesn't let that concern show on his face, not wanting to give Bucky the impression that he's a prisoner. What he does do is smile and ask, as rasp-free as he can manage fresh out of sleep, "Hey, Bucky. You doin' okay over there?"

Bucky doesn't look it; he looks sweaty and several days unshaved, shaky, maybe dehydrated. While waiting for Bucky to answer, Sam acts on that last thought, moving to the little cooler he'd picked up while he was out with Rhonda (along with lunch and-or dinner, and the rental car, and some supplies for said cooler). He braces himself, hissing at the cold as he stuffs his hand into the half-melted ice, fishing a bottle of water out from it.

Sam doesn't like the lingering chill, but it does make him feel about twice as alert as before. He offers the water wordlessly to Bucky. Furrowing his brow in caution, Bucky accepts, twisting the cap off of the bottle.

He drinks the water just as reverently as he consumes anything else, slow sips, savoring each one. Sam has to remind himself to be supportive when he catches the sound of Bucky quietly sobbing, though he can't see if there are tears or not in the early morning dark and he's making a point of not watching too closely, anyway. He says, "You're doing really great, you know. You can have more if you want."

Bucky shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes with his metal hand and determinedly drinking the bottle dry. The crinkling and popping of the plastic is louder than Bucky's grief is, but neither sound wakes Steve and, thankfully, once he's finished Bucky seems a world calmer than when he'd started.

"How you doin' now?" Sam asks, since he never got an answer to his first question. He tries to look more awake than he feels, for Bucky's benefit. While Sam could definitely find it in him to get back to sleep for the rest of the night, Bucky gives the impression that he's afraid even to close his eyes. It's clear to Sam, at least, that the need written there outweighs his own. Who ever needed a solid eight hours to function anyway, right?

"I don't know," Bucky says, after some thought, keeping his grip light so the empty bottle doesn't get crushed, turning it over slowly between his hands. While it wasn't clear before, while they were fighting, the difference in responsiveness between the prosthesis and Bucky's real hand is noticeable. Sam wonders if that's to do with lack of maintenance, but has no idea how to gracefully bring that up to ask. 

Bucky's face twists up, like he's sick of saying that, even if it's true. The next words come out more hesitant, as Bucky feels his way through the truth of them, tries to give a better answer.

"Better? I think."

"It's fine even if you're not better," Sam promises.

He knows Steve doesn't mean to put the pressure to be fixed on Bucky, but Steve's doing it nonetheless. It's a burden to be worried about that much when you're the one who's broken. Sam knows it firsthand, and the lucky thing about his line of work is having half a clue about how to navigate from here. Sam approaches Bucky's side of the room, motioning as a silent question to the empty spot to the right of where Bucky is sitting. Sam waits, receiving a hesitant nod before he joins Bucky there, keeping to the right edge of the bed while Bucky scoots further to the left. Steve snores on, oblivious to them both, in the other bed.

"I'm kinda getting the impression you're having trouble sleeping," Sam adds casually. He turns his face toward the TV, angles his body at it and not at Bucky, and reaches over to snag the remote from the bedside table before settling in. Body language is important here. Creating an obvious safety net is important, here.

Bucky seems reluctant to answer, but Sam doesn't push or follow up. He's rewarded with an eventual, slow nod, admitting that yes, sleep is not Bucky's friend right now.

"Was that a problem while you were wandering around too?"

"Yes." As they talk, Sam makes it clear he plans to watch the TV and keeps to his corner of the bed, and Bucky starts to relax. This position isn't completely ideal, since it puts him out of Bucky's personal space, but also puts him between Bucky and the door.

Sam tries to make his next question a gentle joke, but he's not sure if Bucky will be embarrassed about it or not. "Didn't stop to eat or drink much?"

Bucky shakes his head, squeezing the little empty water bottle in both hands subconsciously. It protests with a sharp, high-pitched series of pops and crackles, crumpling under his metal fingers, and Bucky gives a start, nearly dropping it. "--Hhh!"

"Here, let me take care of that for you." Sam reaches out for the empty bottle. Bucky hands it over wordlessly, relief flickering across his face.

"Sorry."

"It's completely all right. Trust me, the stuff you've been through-- it's reasonable to feel this way."

"I wasn't always like this," Bucky says quietly, sounding desperate for some reassurance that this is true; that the him he can't remember was different; that there's someone worth remembering how to be, hidden somewhere in his damaged mind.

Sam doesn't know from personal experience, but he is pretty certain Bucky's right, so he agrees on principle. "No, you weren't." He nods over at Steve, who is now snoring lightly. There's something kind of funny to Sam that Captain America snores, but it's not like Sam doesn't talk in his sleep, so he's not pointing fingers. Bucky follows Sam's glance, and after a moment looks back at Sam questioningly. "He remembers what you used to be like, you know. Might be able to help you remember, too?"

Bucky shrugs, rubbing at his knees distractedly, nervous. "Maybe."

"That why you're up at four in the a-m?" Sam asks, turning the sound down a little bit on the TV and turning on closed captions, just in case they end up wanting to watch the TV more than they want to talk to each other. "Trying to remember?"

Bucky's shoulders hunch up, and he shifts away from Sam. Too direct, then.

Though he'd been planning to give Bucky something to latch onto by talking about his own lost sense of purpose after serving in Afghanistan, Sam takes that cue and changes the subject. "You know, I used to run laps around the block when I was having trouble sleeping. Try to tire myself out."

"...did it work?"

"Got me to sleep, yeah," Sam says with a laugh. "I also put holes in my shoes within something like two weeks of buying them for a few months because of it, but." He shrugs his sore shoulder, yawns despite his best intentions, and sits up a little straighter in the bed to try to jar himself more awake again.

Looking lost, Bucky chews on the inside of his cheek, thinking it over. "I don't think I should."

"No?"

"Might not come back."

Sam nods once, surprised by Bucky's honesty. "Good thinking." Still, he tries to make light of it, adding with a grin, "Besides, shoes aren't cheap."

Now, Sam hasn't got a clue what Bucky was like before all this, but if he's the sort of person that Steve could look up to, Sam is convinced that once upon a time, Bucky had a sense of humor. In the struggle to find one's equilibrium after coming home from service, Sam has found that for a lot of people, the return of that sense of humor is the first and best sign of recovery. Steve's got it; jaded, self-deprecating humor, but he has it, and on good days he's capable of flirting with the idea of making a joke just because he can, even.

As he is right now, Bucky is still too much in shock, too afraid to have a sense of humor, let alone pick up on the fact that Sam is trying to make a joke. When Bucky gets past this-- when he's able to laugh-- in Sam's absolutely professional opinion and more importantly, in his personal one, that's when Bucky will be on his way to being whoever he was before.

"Are we going to stay here?" Bucky asks, plaintive enough that Sam wonders which possibility bothers Bucky more, the yes or the no.

"Do you want to?" Sam asks, tapping the empty bottle against his knee thoughtfully. "We can stay here a while if you want. We can leave, too." He doesn't want to hand the decision over to Bucky entirely, but it's important to make it clear that Bucky does have a little bit of say in where they go.

He gets a headshake for his trouble, and Bucky turns his attention down to his hands. Silence for a minute or two suggest that Bucky's done talking, so Sam turns the volume on the TV back up a little bit, for all intents and purposes appearing focused now on watching the Twilight Zone. This particular episode is one that he hated as a kid. Gave him terrible nightmares about being the last kid on Earth. It's gripping stuff, though, and he can't help but respect good storytelling.

Bucky turns his attention toward the screen after a while, evidently drawn in by the dialogue, and they watch it together, silently sharing the horror of the protagonist as he tries to figure out what's happening in a town that's not as normal as it originally seemed.

It only occurs to Sam when the show cuts to commercial that a horror story about an astronaut losing his sense of self in prolonged isolation _might_ not have the most positive effect on Bucky.

Kicking himself internally, Sam changes the channel until he comes across an infomercial for some kind of miracle cleanser. Good enough. He leaves it there, until Bucky turns to look at Sam over his shoulder, expression heartbroken and anxious.

"Why'd you change it?"

"Oh, uh." Sam doesn't want to lie, but he doesn't want to lay the blame at Bucky's feet, and shrugs, a little embarrassed to be caught out. "I-- actually don't like that one too much. Freaked me out when I was a kid."

Bucky glances back at the TV, then turns to Sam. "What happens? At the end."

"Well," Sam offers Bucky the remote, shrugging slightly. "If you want to watch it, we can. I can tell you what happens, too, if you want."

Brow furrowing, Bucky examines the remote, deciphering its workings quickly. With confidence, he turns it toward the TV, typing in the channel number to return to sy-fy well in time to catch the rest of the commercial break, as well as the show.

That seems like answer enough to Sam, and he is pleasantly surprised by Bucky's evident curiosity with regard to the show. He's still a little worried about how Bucky will take the denouement of the episode, but it seems to Sam that allowing Bucky to make the decision for himself is more important than protecting him from something that might upset him.

"Is he okay at the end?" Bucky asks, while they wait through an ad for a local law office. Bucky's hand is gripping the remote a little more tightly than Sam likes, but he doesn't hear the telltale creaking of plastic about to snap, so he doesn't comment on it.

"He's safe." It's not all of the details, but it seems to be enough for Bucky, who nods once and doesn't speak again until the show is over.

Sam is well and truly, miserably awake now, though he wouldn't say no to a pot of coffee, and he finds himself watching Bucky against his better judgment, with about the same rapt focus as Bucky watches the show.

The credits start rolling at 4:54 a.m., and the sun's already coming up outside. Sam is still waiting for Bucky's response, having watched the tension of anticipation spread from Bucky's hunched shoulders to his now-clenched hands-- one with the remote, the metal one gripping Bucky's left knee probably hard enough to bruise. Sam-the-kid had always felt a shock of relief when the astronaut was rescued by his fellows from the isolation training at the end of the show.

Bucky stares at the screen in silence for several more seconds before he passes the remote control back to Sam, murmuring _thanks_. He doesn't say anything more, doesn't ask any questions about the episode, just lies down on the bed on his back, staring at the ceiling, hands fisted at his sides. Maybe he just can't help it, but to Sam's eye, Bucky looks intensely dissatisfied by the outcome.

Sam asks, "You okay?"

Bucky says, "You lied." He looks at Sam in open accusation, with a little hurt hidden under it. "You changed it because you were thinking he was too much like me." If it weren't so late (early), Sam would have the wherewithal to be impressed by Bucky's ability to read Sam's concern, as well as relieved that they had both made at least some kind of connection between that fictional story and Bucky's real life, even if Bucky (who knows his own story a lot better than Sam) didn't agree with Sam's guess after the truth.

As it is, Sam shrugs and gets up from the bed, stretching until his spine pops.

"Yeah, that too. Wasn't lying, though. That one really did creep me out when I was a kid." Sam smiles, spreads his hands in a gesture of peace, says, "I don't like being alone. I wouldn't want to be alone that long."

Bucky seems to accept this, because his expression softens to one of understanding. "It's bad," he says, a quiet confession that Sam's not even sure he's supposed to hear. "Worse than that was."

Then he closes his eyes, and the room is filled only with the low sound of the TV chittering about an upcoming episode of the Outer Limits. Sam leaves the channel as it is, puts down the remote. He can't ignore his full bladder now that he's standing, so he takes the opportunity to use the restroom, shower once he's done relieving himself, re-dress in only-slightly-smelly clothes and return to the bed where Steve is now snoring more loudly.

When he looks, Bucky is still lying there in the other bed, but he's obviously not asleep.

"You gonna catch some z's, there, Bucky?"

Bucky clenches his jaw tighter, and shakes his head no.

"You gonna be okay if I do?"

After a moment, Bucky says, "Yes. Yeah." Softer: "Sorry."

"It's okay. We're your friends. I want to help."

"I guess so."

Bucky's bed squeaks when he rearranges himself, trying to lay more comfortably, Sam thinks. The Outer Limits episode is from a reboot of the series; he hasn't seen this one in particular, but he's too tired to follow the plot as it begins to get complicated. "See you in the morning, then," Sam yawns.

Bucky, who Sam realizes drowsily might not know Sam's name, says, "It _is_ morning."

He snorts. "Semantics."

That's the last thing Sam remembers clearly, aside from passing out, until he comes around on the other side of it sprawled against the immovable rock of Steve Rogers's too-big-body hogging all of the covers. Sam blearily wonders how Steve is still unconscious when Sam got so much less sleep than him. He pries himself up from his tiny sliver of the bed, grumbling, and spots Bucky in the corner now, fishing through the cooler.

"Mornin'," Sam yawns, rubbing at his neck and blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "Well, later morning. Hey, while you're in there can you grab me a water bottle?"

It would have been hard to miss the way Bucky froze when Sam got up, looking guilty and ashamed for rooting around in someone else's property. Sam's continued calm and acceptance does what it's supposed to do, though, melting all that away in the face of relief. Bucky grabs a water bottle from the mostly-melted ice with his metal hand, which makes Sam slightly envious for a second.

The water hits the spot, though Sam is definitely in the mood for coffee, given the night he had, and he guzzles the whole thing with reckless abandon, quenching his thirst. It's only after he tosses the empty bottle into the little trash can that Sam realizes Bucky hasn't gone back into the cooler again to grab whatever it was that had caught his interest.

He decides to give Bucky a bit of a nudge and see how things go. "You can have whatever you like from in there if you want. Food, drink, help yourself."

Bucky frowns at the food-- admittedly, okay, lunchables aren't very exciting to Sam either, but they were cheap and the convenience store had them-- and fishes out a can of soda. Sam is glad he picked up a six pack of Coke expecting Steve to like it, because it means Bucky can indulge like he seems to want to. It's the crack of the can opening that finally drags Steve into the world of the waking again, and he observes the tableau of Bucky carefully sipping the fizz off the lip of his Coke can, not seeming to register that Sam is there too for a few seconds.

"Mornin', Steve," Sam says, amused by Steve's comically confused expression.

"Mornin'," Steve slurs back, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the window's thin, gauzy curtain and scratching a hand through his hair. He looks like a scruffy, recalcitrant tomcat.

Bucky surprises them both by responding to the greeting-- no semantics this time, just a simple: "Morning." Then, before he can be brought into a real conversation, he takes a sip of his soda, closing his eyes and turning away to the window to savor it and hide from them both.

"You gonna want a shower?" Sam asks, while Steve continues to squint as if he can't quite figure out whether Bucky is a figment of his imagination or not, sitting hunched over in the bed and looking more tired than he has any right to look, in Sam's moderately uncharitable estimation. If it weren't for the fact that Steve will probably be driving them, which frees Sam up to catch up on sleep while they travel, Sam would be downright offended.

"Uh, nah." Steve yawns hugely. "No, that's okay, I can wait until tonight or tomorrow morning." Steve rubs at his face, forcing himself to look away from Bucky. The room's barely been lived in, but Steve goes through the motions of cleaning it up, collecting their meager belongings in preparation to leave. He asks over his shoulder, "Breakfast?" and looks at Sam, still a bit drowsy but rapidly approaching awake.

"Definitely," Sam laughs, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of their door. "Denny's across the street if you want to stick to the usual fare. I think I saw an Olive Garden on the way back here, too, if you want Italian."

The pinched look Steve shoots at Bucky says too much for Bucky to miss, even though he's only watching them out of the corner of his eye. (Watching, Sam knows, like a hawk, waiting to bolt again.) "You sure that's a good idea, Sam?"

Steve's got this way of turning suddenly condescending when he thinks he knows best. It would drive lesser people to harsh words and possibly terminated friendships. Maybe it has, who knows.

Sam knows some of it comes from Steve obsessively worrying over Bucky-- tying himself and his future to the idea of rescuing Bucky, of saving him from whatever the hell happened-- and he also knows that some of the reason they clash so much right now is because they've been pretty much roommates for the last several months, not been taking nearly as many breaks from having to deal with each other as they should. So Sam is fully aware that he's particularly quick to irritation regarding certain habits of Steve's, and Steve is particularly quick to being insufferable, right now. That doesn't change the fact that it's damn annoying, though, and he doesn't bother suppressing a roll of his eyes and a stern look right back at Steve for this one.

"Yeah, actually. I do. Unless you want to eat in this motel room? Because that doesn't sound like the most comfortable way to handle things for _any_ body."

Luckily, Steve does have something of a filter, and usually if Sam's sharp enough with him, he catches on. He does now, deflating a bit and looking sheepish. "No-- no, you're right. Denny's sounds fine to me. What about you, do y--" he stops, looking obviously over at Bucky again but, even more obviously, not finishing his question.

Sam does it for him, because this is one impulse he wants Steve to embrace, if he can. "You wanna come with, Bucky? Or you can stay here while we get food instead. Whatever you think'd be better."

In the same way he's been approaching everything, Bucky takes his time to answer. Sam can feel Steve getting anxious just waiting for it, worrying that Bucky's broken beyond repair.

To Sam, it's obvious that's not the case. Bucky survived on his own for the last several months. He didn't do the greatest job and he's still far from where he needs to be, but he's perfectly capable of deciding whether he wants to eat breakfast with them or not. When Steve starts to speak up, trying to make the decision for them, Sam kicks him lightly in the shins. Steve flinches-- 'ow!' --and looks at him incredulously; Sam just gives him a tight smile in response, holding up a hand to signal _wait_.

"I don't have any money." Bucky says at last. "Can I still come with you?"

Steve looks crestfallen, hastily assuring Bucky, "Aw, Buck, of course you can. I'll pay for it, don't worry about that."

This information, like everything, is news to Bucky but he takes it well, nodding slowly. "Okay."

That's all there really is to it. They're decided to go. Sam suggests, as they head out of the motel room, to walk to the restaurant and eat before they check out, and nobody argues with him. It might be quicker to check out first and move the car over to the Denny's parking lot, but Sam is thinking ahead and he has a bad feeling that Bucky might not be too great in a space as enclosed as a car. No particular reason why, exactly, but with Rhonda yesterday Bucky and Steve had both been awful, and given Bucky's response to the show last night, Sam gets the impression that claustrophobia might be an unfortunate acquaintance of Bucky's, too.

It's already hot outside, even though it's barely after nine in the morning. Sunlight glares off of the cracked asphalt of the motel's parking lot. The three of them walk in relative silence, broken up mostly by Sam making small talk about how well Steve slept, teasing him for snoring. Though the humidity isn't as bad here as it is closer to the coastal edge of town, it's a relief when they get inside the restaurant and are immediately treated to a blast of conditioned, cool air. Houston's climate isn't quite as inviting as some of the other places they've been, but the fact that it's summer doesn't help.

Like usual, once they're inside Sam takes the lead with the hostess while Steve scowls around at anyone who looks like they might give Sam trouble. Bucky falls into their rhythm easily enough. He doesn't go all out like Steve does but he always looks serious. When he hasn't slept like this, he has a certain edge to the look of him that scares people off a lot more effectively than Steve does.

In short order they find themselves at a booth in a corner by a window that overlooks a fallow field between here and the freeway that brought them into town. Sam goes through his routine, and so does Steve, examining each item on the menu with stoic patience.

But Bucky puts a new spin on things, because he is entranced by that field, and watches a slight wind stir the long grasses there. He focuses on the single, sickly looking sapling that Sam thinks is probably some kind of citrus tree, watching as its leaves flutter obstinately, its twiggy branches sagging with dried up, blackened fruit. Bucky stares at a group of sparrows that are fighting over some discarded onion rings out there and he catches his breath, startled, when one of them takes flight, zipping off across the field toward the motel.

While he could step in, Sam takes the opportunity to see how Steve responds to that-- lets Steve ask Bucky, "What do you want, Buck?"

Bucky looks at Steve like that is a very difficult and unfair question, which it kind of is, and Sam is hard pressed to hide his answering grin. He doesn't stop himself from saying, "Steve Rogers. Asking the _real_ questions."

For that, Steve gives Sam a much-suffered frown, but he's good-natured about it. He turns his attention back to Bucky, taking the hint and rephrasing his question. "What I mean is, we're getting breakfast. What do you want to eat? And drink?"

So while Sam watches, Steve does successfully redirect Bucky's attention to the menu. Bucky picks up the one that had been set down in front of him to examine it with curiosity. From there, it seems that things will go back to the usual silent morning exchange, with both Bucky and Steve scavenging the entire menu for scraps of information about what they'd lost in the years they spent hidden away from the world.

Then Bucky says, intensly interested, "Is this good?" He's pointing to some kind of specialty dish Sam's never found interesting, the description of which sounds adequate to Sam, though not particularly his taste. He shrugs, looking at Steve.

"I guess?"

"I haven't tried it," Steve admits, apologetic, and Bucky shakes his head.

"I'll ask the waitress." And when she comes back bearing Sam's much-needed coffee, Bucky does exactly that, pointing to the same spot on the menu and reading off the name-- "The Sante Fe skillet, is that good?"

Sam sips his coffee with relish, and observes Steve's surprised response to Bucky's curiosity. One has to wonder what Steve was expecting, though Sam has long since conceded that Steve is right _enough_ about Bucky, and had been right not to stop him-- as Sam had suggested-- back on that ship. The waitress, whose name is Teal, says, "It's not my favorite, but it's pretty popular with the truckers."

"Oh."

Noticing Bucky's disappointed frown, the waitress leans in a bit, as if she's sharing a secret. "Uh, but it's still good. And, well, if you want my favorite on the skillets, I usually do the Ultimate. I like the little tomatoes, you know?"

Bucky chews the inside of his lip, turning it over. "I'll try it."

"Great! Well, I hope you like it." She grins awkwardly, wrinkling her nose. "I mean, I'm sure you will. If you're anything like me."

Sam braces himself for some hilariously inappropriate admission of the obvious on Bucky's part, that he's nothing like this bright-eyed and hopeful young woman. Instead, Bucky manages the ghost of a smile (which is a surprise in and of itself) and says, "We'll find out, I guess."


	5. Steve

Steve feels self-conscious as the food arrives. Sam, who is on his third cup of coffee, looks contentedly distracted, though he is keeping one eye on Bucky and the other on the door. They haven't yet talked about what to do from here, where to go, how to proceed. They haven't talked about what kind of risks they might be facing with Bucky along for the ride, let alone the risks that follow them because of Steve. They haven't talked about the fact that Steve declared himself the leader and now that they've finally accomplished their goal, Steve is as directionless as Bucky.

Bucky's meal-- an omelette style dish served on a still-sizzling iron skillet-- smells surprisingly good. Steve can't help wondering why he's never given the breakfast skillets-- or any of the omelettes-- a try. He knew they were on the menu; he honestly has the whole thing memorized, at this point. Lately, though, he's given preference to bland food, occasionally not even picking items he actually likes, and finds that the mediocrity of it is soothingly reminiscent of army fare. He still reads the menu as a matter of course, a reminder that if he wanted to pick something else, he could. It helps him to be fully aware of the options even if he still makes the same choice. 

His own order-- eggs, sausage, flapjacks, orange juice-- stares up at him from the table, and for the first time in six months Steve realizes that he doesn't really want what he asked for. He's a little surprised. Consciously or not, he hasn't really been giving himself the option to eat anything else for breakfast. Now here is Bucky, trying something new that the waitress recommended, cautiously tasting it and brightening when he likes it. Bucky is unabashedly grateful for every bite of food, every sip of drink, and doesn't seem self-conscious about the way he starts sniffling when he's overcome again, teary-eyed and wounded. 

Try as he might, Steve hasn't got any solid reason behind his own stubborn refusal to try anything new, lately. He doubts he'd be as moved as Bucky if he were to change that going forward, but maybe he'll never know unless he tries it. He regards his own breakfast with trepidation, cuts out a bite of egg and eats it. 

It tastes faintly metallic. Salty. Why didn't he try something else? 

"We need to figure out where to go from here," Steve says, trying to distract himself while he makes himself eat the eggs and sausage. He doesn't feel like pancakes, so leaves the shortstack untouched. It feels like a victory. At least, it's definitely much better than just choking them down would have been. He doesn't mean to cut Bucky out of the conversation, but Steve doesn't know how to handle him right now, so he feels like the best option is to just stay hands-off until things get a little clearer. He pointedly keeps his attention on Sam, ignoring the way Bucky plucks distractedly at the sleeve of the hoodie Steve lent him. 

Sam notices, but doesn't call Steve on it right away. "Yeah? I was thinking the same thing." He glances over to Bucky, checking to see if he's all right. This time it's just misty eyes and quiet contemplation instead of outright sobbing, but Steve isn't sure how bad the pressure of being out in public might be in conjunction with whatever it is that's making Bucky so emotional over his meals. "Lot to talk about, though. We might want to do it somewhere a little quieter?" 

It's a good point, so Steve doesn't dismiss it out of hand. "Might be best. But at the very least, I'd like to figure out where we're going." 

On this matter, they haven't spoken at all. Maybe they should take a moment to do that, let Bucky sit in the motel room or the car while Steve and Sam hammer out the part of the plan that comes after 'find Bucky'. It makes Steve a little uncomfortable to think that he's had months to figure this out, and has devoted so little thought to it that he has no idea what to do. 

By contrast, Sam seems to do well with this whole thinking on the fly thing. Over a contemplative sip of his coffee, he has an idea and announces it with a grunt, setting his mug down and pointing at Steve. 

"You should call up Nick! Sounded like he was going to be busy with that stuff for a while. He's probably still at it, right?" 

The thought had crossed Steve's mind, but he balks at bringing Bucky anywhere near SHIELD or any remnants of HYDRA. He hates to think of risking Bucky's comfort by surrounding him with doctors when Bucky is so obviously afraid of them, and he doesn't think he can really trust any remnants of SHIELD that might still be rallying to Nick Fury, anyway. If Steve is fumbling this badly trying to help Bucky recover, there's a good chance someone as impatient and commanding as Nick will do worse. Steve tries not to let his reluctance show on his face as he glances Bucky's way, but he knows he's failed from the chiding expression that Sam turns back on him. 

"Stop that." 

"I can't help worrying." 

"Seriously, stop." 

" _And_ ", Steve counters, refocusing on Sam, "I have good reason to worry. You've met Nick; you know what he's like. Even when I feel pretty sure we're on the same team, I'm not convinced I can get behind his methods." 

"Hey, he saved my life. I'm pretty sure he's a decent guy." Sam's wry look is just a hair closer to annoyed than it is to amused, so Steve stops himself from quipping about Nick saving Sam and extortion, giving the suggestion a bit more actual consideration. 

He sighs at the thought of having to navigate another conversation with Nick Fury. Steve always feels like he's missing several key pieces of information when he talks with Nick, and that hasn't changed now that SHIELD's secrets are public knowledge. "It's an option," he says at last, not wanting to deny the validity of Sam's suggestion but still loathe to approach the practicality of it. 

"An _option_?" 

"I'm not saying it isn't a logical place to go," Steve concedes. "I just. Don't know if I'm ready to deal with whatever that's going to entail, yet, either. He talks circles around me." 

At that, Sam laughs outright, his indignant scowl melting away. He drains the drags of his coffee. "He is a fast-talker. All right, maybe not yet. Not really sure where we'd find him in the first place." 

Steve broods over the fragmentation that has followed SHIELD's public dissolution. He knows he could find Nick if he really tried; he knows where to find Maria Hill and Tony Stark; but the others? Bruce Banner, Natasha's friend Clint? Thor? He wouldn't know where to start. 

"Oh!" Sam snaps his fingers. "Ah, what's her name? You know. What about your big sister?" 

"She's not--" Steve sighs, shaking his head as he realizes that Sam is teasing him. The grin is a dead giveaway. "Ha, ha. I'd like to contact her, yes. If we can figure out where she is." 

"Hmmm, could be tricky." Sam scratches his chin thoughtfully. "Good point." 

"I don't have a lot of friends in the modern day." 

Resting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, Sam grumbles in agreement. "And the ones you do have are like, ninety-percent spies, yeah. I think I'm beginning to see the problem." 

Bucky speaks up suddenly, setting his fork and knife aside with a finality that doesn't match the not-quite-half-finished meal in front of him. "I still need clothes." 

Though he knows that Bucky is fully able to speak, to _think_ , Steve is still surprised by the interjection. It's not that Steve has forgotten that Bucky is currently wearing hand-me-downs, but he had written off the concern temporarily, satisfied that Bucky was not covered in blood (whether his own or someone else's) and not even considered that Bucky might want something else to wear. 

Steve's response, therefore, is to stare at first. He drags his attention back to his plate, where the last sausage link is waiting for him, offering him an out. Steve toys with it, pushing it across his plate with his fork, and says placatingly, "We can swing by on our way out of town, then. I'm sure there'll be something." 

Bucky is silent, and shifts uncomfortably in his seat, evidently accepting Steve's answer for a final one. Though he wants to add that they'll do it right after breakfast, that Bucky doesn't have to wait, Steve feels at a loss for the proper words. Luckily for everyone, Sam is there to scoff and keep the conversation from guttering out. 

"There's a Walmart like, literally up the street. We'll do that next." 

When Sam smiles encouragingly at Bucky, he gets the same unresponsive stare Steve does. Still, at least Bucky says, "Thanks." Steve just doesn't like how even with simple words, it feels a little like Bucky is imitating the speech he hears between them without really understanding it. 

He squishes that thought down, determined to do better, and reminds himself that Bucky just brought up a concern on his own that neither Steve nor Sam had mentioned. Trying to respect that, he looks Bucky in the eye, speaking to him directly. 

"Honestly, while we're still figuring out what to do-- I'm a little worried about your arm, too. Is it working right? Does it need to be tuned up regularly?" 

Bucky looks down at it, and Steve is grateful for the third or fourth time this morning that he'd still had the hoodie on hand to help conceal the metal. It looks a bit too big on Bucky, but it gets the job done. "I'm not sure." Bucky admits, after a moment. 

"I bet Stark would know," Steve muses, even though he's pretty sure he wants to see Tony Stark even less than he wants to match wits with Nick Fury. "Still, I wouldn't want to subject anybody to his ego." 

Maybe a bit he's hoping for a spark of recognition; for Bucky to say, 'you mean Howard?'. The moment passes in silence instead. Bucky nods, seeming to take Steve's response to be a definitive decision and accept it implicitly. Sam's deep in thought, and when Steve looks his way again he says, 

"Actually, I think you're on to something, there. That other gal should be working for him, last we heard, right? Not your sister, the one from the van." 

Steve lets the quip about Natasha being his sister pass with a roll of his eyes. "You mean Maria? Yeah, she did say she was interviewing with the company. I don't know if she got the job, though." 

"Well, _if_ she's there, she might even know how to get in touch with Nick or your other friends. We could see if she might ask around while we're visiting." Sam turns back to Bucky with an encouraging smile. "Stark's great with mechanics. If anybody's gonna be able to tell whether your arm's working right or not, it's him. He might even be able to improve it, if you're having any problems with functionality." 

Worried that someone might tune in to their conversation and get curious (though he isn't the sort to worry generally about being under surveillance), Steve eyes the surrounding tables and the patrons at them, checking to see if anybody seems too interested. It's getting close to nine-thirty, and the closest table to them is full with a family of three children, chattering vivaciously and oblivious to the rest of the floor. The other table, the one behind Steve, is empty. He relaxes marginally and considers the bar. More people sit there than anywhere else nearby, and they're several feet from the corner booth, engaged in lively debate about the local football team. 

Allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief, Steve determinedly ignores the lingering paranoid impulse to watch the crowd around them for potential spies or assassins. He reminds himself that if they were being monitored, he would know and he would be able to act from there. Even if they were people sent for Bucky alone, he would notice, and he would be able to intercept them. The thought is reassuring. 

Bucky, meanwhile, has been considering this information. He asks, "Could he repair the nerve connectors?" 

"Uh," Sam looks at Steve, but he has no more idea of whether Stark will be useful in that regard or not. Steve is still considering the importance of letting them both know that, chances are, Stark won't even agree to look at the tech without a considerable amount of badgering. Sam says, "I'm gonna say probably yes, but with the caveat that I don't know exactly which part of the arm you mean?" 

"The interface between the prosthesis and my nervous system." Bucky intones, dropping his gaze to the plate in front of him. There's something odd about the way he says it, as if he was trained to rattle off these exact instructions in this exact situation. How he received that training is open to interpretation, but Steve suspects the worst and feels a flash of anger, seeing it surfacing here and now. "Connective wires six through eighteen's casings were damaged during the mission and need to be re-installed before the wires corrode." 

Steve feels a little sick, trying to envision what that means for Bucky, exactly. "He'll know what to do, Bucky. He can help you." And hopefully, Steve doesn't add, he'll do it without making any exorbitant demands. 

The jerky nod he gets in response is worrisome, but Bucky seems to come out of the haze that had descended over him, confusion twisting his face. "--okay?" 

"That's the spirit." Sam suffuses his posture and the tone of his voice with enthusiasm and support, and Steve tries to follow suit. "Don't worry, you'll get to meet him before we tell him what's up. If you don't like him we'll look for someone else to play mechanic for you. Sound all right?" 

"All right." 

"It's a good start," Steve decides. "Gives us a direction to go for now, at least." 

"I'll get us on our way, then." Sam flags down their waitress, Teal, waving as she passes near their table. "Hey! I think we're about ready to go. Can we snag the check and a to-go box, please?" 

"Sure! I will be _right_ back." She slips behind the bar and into the kitchen, returning with a styrofoam box and producing the bill from her apron. Sam takes the bill, while Steve accepts the box and transfers his untouched shortstack in first. The box is big enough for Bucky's leftovers too, he thinks, and so once he's settled the pancakes in one corner, he starts to scoop the omelette into the box as well. 

Teal reaches out, offering to help pack the food up, only stopping when she notices which plate Steve is cleaning up. She winces, giving Bucky an apologetic half-smile. 

"Didn't like it after all?" 

"No, it's good," Bucky insists quickly, brightening at the memory of it and half-smiling back at her. He looks, suddenly, like himself again. Steve finds the discrepancy wildly disconcerting, pausing in midst of his task. "It's good, just too much." 

Teal laughs; she has a gawky sort of laugh that makes Steve smile too, and Steve catches sight of Sam grinning as he thumbs out a stack of crisp five-dollar bills to cover the meal and a generous tip, handing the lot up to her with a wink. Bucky's smile is still small, but it's earnest, and Steve tells Teal, 

"Thank you. You've been really great, we appreciate it." 

She beams at him, giggling again. "Well, you three have a lovely morning then, okay? I hope we'll be seeing you back in sometime soon." She steps away, returning behind the bar to ring up their order and stow the cash in the register. 

Steve finishes scooping their leftovers inside of the styrofoam box and closes it, sliding out of the booth. He carries the box one-handed while Sam stands, stretches, and waits for Bucky to follow their lead. 

"I'm gonna stop on by the facilities but I'll meet you outside, fellas," Sam says, slipping off into the crowd and towards the back of the restaurant, following the signs for the restroom. That leaves Steve to guide Bucky out the door. He's tempted to take Bucky by the arm just to make sure he doesn't get lost, but manages to restrain the urge and just heads for the exit to see if that will work. 

Like a faithful shadow, Bucky follows. Apparently, Steve needn't have worried. 

The sweltering heat outside has gotten worse in the interim, and it doesn't help that they're close to the shoreline. While Steve squints up at the sky and laments the bone-dry blue of it, Bucky becomes fascinated with the ants crawling through scraps of a discarded meal beside the door. The temperature and humidity don't seem to bother Bucky at all, hoodie notwithstanding. He holds very still at two paces from where Steve is standing, almost as if he is waiting with half an ear for his next order. 

Steve worries that that's why Bucky is still with them this morning. After all, he could run if he wanted. If he _doesn't_ want to, that begs the question of why not, especially when he still doesn't seem to remember Steve much, if at all. Maybe, since Steve was the last mission target, Bucky has determined that Steve is his new commander, given the failure of his mission. It's probably too optimistic to think that he's staying because some small part of Bucky does remember, but Steve finds himself hoping that's the real reason anyway. 

He doesn't try to strike up conversation, watching Bucky as intently as Bucky does the ants. Fortunately, it's not long before Sam rejoins them. Steve calls to him, 'Bucky, come on' and Bucky snaps back to attention at the sound of his name, following Steve's lead swiftly and silently. 

"So, what next?" Sam asks briskly, as they're crossing the street. 

"Might as well check out of the motel first. Then," Steve glances over at Bucky, "We need to get him clothes. After that, my plan is more or less that we get started driving in the general direction of Manhattan. There's not really anything keeping us here." 

Bucky just nods, but Sam gives the pair of them a searching look, as if Steve has forgotten something important and obvious. "You gonna be okay in the car, Bucky? You seemed pretty tense yesterday with Rhonda." 

"It was loud." Bucky scratches at his right arm, becomes distracted with tugging at the sleeve, and trails off. His attention wanders to a throng of children playing tag further up the street. While he's distracted, Steve and Sam trade a look of concern behind him. 

"Well," Sam catches Bucky's shoulder to bring him back to the conversation at hand. Bucky looks disoriented, but doesn't fight them, looking from Sam to Steve and back again. "This car should be a nice change. Hopefully." 

"Okay." 

"You want the front seat, or the back?" 

"I don't care." Sam shrugs, and Steve shakes his head, letting the matter drop for the moment. 

They reach the car in question. It's the first time Steve's had a chance to look at Sam's choice, but he can't find fault with it. It's a sedan, a bit small for his tastes, but they should all fit inside, which is the important thing. It's a nondescript middle-gray, looks almost new, and bears the Pontiac logo. The trunk looks spacious enough to handle the cooler Sam picked up, along with their compact travel bags (one for Sam's clothes and mp3 player, one for Steve's clothes and their essentials-- spare shoes, toothbrushes, bars of soap and bottles of shampoo). He gives an approving whistle, and Sam basks in it with a smug grin. 

"You really _have_ been thinking about this a while," Steve teases. 

"I meant what I said. I'm looking forward to driving, too." 

"Oh? And who said you get a turn?" 

Sam laughs. "I'm willing to bet you'll change your mind after a few hours of staring at the desert passing' by." 

"Well, you can have second shift, then, once you've caught up on your shut-eye." Steve offers his card key to Sam, and turns to Bucky. 

He seems lost, standing there waiting by the car. Though he looks around with interest at the various other people walking in the area, including an elderly couple heading toward a room on the second floor of the motel, Bucky doesn't seem to be paying attention to their conversation. 

Trying to bring him back into it, Steve asks again, "Hey, Bucky. Front seat sound good? Sam's gonna be manning the radio either way, might as well get the leg room." 

Bucky doesn't respond-- visually or otherwise-- and after a moment, Sam pats his shoulder gently, tells him, "That sounds like a good idea to me, too. Hey, stick here with Steve, would you? I gotta grab our stuff and check us out. I'll meet you back here." 

"Keys?" Steve calls after him, and is rewarded with a jangle as Sam tosses them through the air at Steve's head. Reflex saves him from a black eye, his hand snapping up to catch them before he has time to think about it. Hand still outstretched, Steve raises his eyebrows and grins at Sam in smug challenge. "Really, you're gonna have to try harder than that, Wilson." 

"Nice catch, Rogers. Be right back. Get the AC running', it's nasty out here." 

Steve is left with the keys in hand and Bucky faithfully at his side, a shadow lingering with him there as if maybe, when Sam isn't around, Bucky will reveal some dire secret to Steve. Nothing of the sort happens; Steve clicks the remote entry control, the car responds with a chirp, and Steve pulls open the driver's door, slipping inside. He has to roll the chair back a little bit on the track it has before he's able to fit his legs in around the steering wheel, but it's not the worst car he's traveled in. 

A moment or two later, Bucky pulls open the passenger-side door, awkwardly clambering in and sitting with the door still hanging open, evidently content to leave it that way. He watches Steve pop the keys into the ignition and turn the car on, watches Steve pull shut the driver-side door and fiddle with the air-conditioning, turning it to maximum chill and full blast. Steve has been trying to take Sam's example to heart, but he can't help feeling worried. He wants to support Bucky's ability to make basic choices and help him get comfortable with them again, but it's hard to tell when Bucky is making a choice and when he's simply forgetting something important. It seems to him like Bucky prefers to have the car door open-- maybe he's uncomfortable with the small size of the car otherwise, maybe he simply forgot to close it, maybe he didn't even realize he was supposed to close it. But this isn't something Steve can let Bucky have: whether the car door is open while they're driving or not is not an option. 

He's not going to push if Bucky wants something that can be given, but he was impressed by Sam's approach the night before, and decides that now is a good time to give it a try. "Do you want to adjust the seat at all, Bucky? You can mess with it until you're comfortable if you want, I'm not gonna make you drive." Bucky's brow furrows, and Steve keeps going, trying to get some kind of response that doesn't make him feel like he's talking to a beaten animal. "Would you like to move it back or anything? If you want to. You don't have to." 

Bucky opens his mouth, but whatever he was planning to say doesn't quite make it out. He tries again, then shakes his head, looking down at the emergency brake contritely. He is waiting, Steve realizes, for orders. 

"...okay," Steve sighs, trying not to be too surprised or crushed by that definitive non-answer. "Just-- close the door and put on your seatbelt, okay? Sam's right, it's hot out today." 

There's a slight delay, and then Bucky leans out of the car. From where he sits, he is able to reach until he catches the door handle and pull the door shut. Bucky huddles in the seat reluctantly, clearly unhappy, and says nothing as he turns to look out the window to his right. He makes no move to comply with Steve's secondary request. Steve makes himself look away too, buckling his seatbelt to keep his hands busy. Maybe if he sets the example by doing it first, Bucky will follow suit. 

After a minute or two, Bucky breaks the silence, asking "That's his name?" 

Confused, Steve tries to make sense of the seemingly random question. "What?" 

"The winged man. His name is Sam?" 

"Oh!" Steve can't remember whether they'd told Bucky Sam's name before, but he's struck cold by the fear that Bucky's amnesia is the same kind of dementia that Peggy suffers from. He's not sure he could take both of them forgetting and only briefly remembering him like that. "Yeah, that's Sam Wilson." 

Bucky nods, and before Steve can re-introduce himself, asks: "Do I call you Steve, then?" This close, Steve can see the half-awake lethargy in Bucky's posture, in the dark circles under his eyes and the way he blinks rapidly. It occurs to him to wonder if Bucky got any sleep the night before. He'd assumed the answer was yes, but he hadn't asked. "Or am I supposed to call you Sir? Captain?" 

Steve shakes his head, surprised and a little uncomfortable with the idea of Bucky calling him something so formal. "Steve is fine, honestly." 

This seems to satisfy Bucky's curiosity. He leans back in his seat, attention focused out the window again. Steve follows his line of sight, but can't figure out what it is that Bucky finds so interesting. He does see Sam jogging up to the car well in time to hop out, pop open the trunk, and help manhandle the cooler and their packs (which Sam had been lugging solo) into the little compartment. Sam grabs a bottle of water for the road from the cooler, and Steve stows the leftovers there, grabbing two cans of Coke instead. 

"All right, all right. So where is this Walmart?" Steve inquires, as he's slipping back into his seat. He sets down both cans of Coke in the cup holders between the two front seats. Bucky looks at them with obvious interest, but makes no move to take either one. It's tempting to assure him that he can have one if he wants, but since they'll be getting out at the store in a moment anyway, Steve makes a note to mention it if Bucky still hasn't opened his drink once they're actually en route. 

"Left out of the parking lot, and two lights down. You can't miss it, it's on the right." Sam settles in in the back, pulling out his mp3 player from his pocket and beginning to fiddle with it once he's fastened his seatbelt. 

Steve follows the directions dutifully. He tries not to dwell on the fact that Bucky still hasn't put his own seatbelt on, which is especially noticeable when someone cuts them off as they enter the parking lot and Bucky is jostled violently in his seat by the sudden stop, forcing him to grab the dashboard with a startled yelp of surprise to keep from falling into it. 

"Bucky," Steve says quietly, trying to be gentle. "You really should be wearing your seatbelt, okay? Once we're done getting the clothes, you've gotta put it on before we head out." 

As they pull into a parking space halfway between the left entrance of the storefront and the street, Sam nods in agreement. "It's good to be safe." 

The trip was short enough that Steve finds himself thinking that maybe Bucky just didn't feel like dealing with the complication. He doubts it, but the thought that Bucky just doesn't know any better doesn't comfort him. Bucky doesn't answer them, settling back in his seat. 

"Should we all go in, or do you want me to watch the car?" Sam asks, as Steve puts the car in park. They both glance to Bucky, but he's become distracted by a new flock of birds crowded around a trash can that stands just in front of the store. 

"Should be faster with just the two of us, I think. We'll try to make it quick," Steve says, after a moment debating the merits of both options. He disentangles himself from the seatbelt, leaving the keys in the ignition so Sam will have air conditioning while they're inside, and steps out of the car. He has to circle around and open Bucky's door before Bucky comes back to himself, obediently getting out of the car and, again, trailing Steve from there to the store, keeping close. Steve doesn't have particularly high expectations, but he asks anyway: "Any idea what you want to pick up?" 

"A jacket?" 

They pass through the automatic doors, and Bucky hesitates. Steve can't really blame him. Walmart is vast and cavernous, and Steve finds these kinds of stores a little bit on the intimidating side to navigate too, even though he's been to several by now. 

Overwhelmed, Bucky flounders, looking to Steve for guidance. "Pants. I don't know?" 

"That's a good start," Steve says, as much to reassure himself as Bucky, and leads the way. They've come in on the side that hosts a gigantic grocery area with sixteen aisles stretching to the back wall. Wending his way past the produce and out toward the center of the store, Steve wonders if they should take a little extra time as he glances back at Bucky. Though he wasn't able to finish his breakfast in one sitting, Bucky is lagging behind Steve's brisk pace, lingering by various food displays and eyeing them with open curiosity, even if he doesn't seem particularly hungry at the moment. "Bucky?" 

Just as before, when he hears his name Bucky snaps back to attention, focusing on Steve and moving to join him. It's hard to tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but in this particular case it serves Steve well as they press on toward the clothing displays. 

This location has fitting rooms at its center, surrounded by a ring of racks and stands of clothing. They're organized by age and gender presentation, with the exception of shoes, which are clumped together across six aisles at the back of the store. Steve uses the signs dangling from the unfinished ceiling to orient himself, navigating past accessories, socks, and into the section arbitrarily designated as "men's." He doesn't want to rush Bucky if they need to take more time, but he also is very conscious of the fact that Sam is patiently waiting for them in the car outside. With this in mind, Steve goes to an on-sale display featuring boot-cut jeans in black, blue and khaki. He snags some of the blue-jeans and holds them out to Bucky for inspection. "That good for pants?" 

"Yes?" 

The half-answer, like all the ones before it, grates on Steve's nerves. It's so patently unlike Bucky to be so timid. Still, uncertainty is more than no emotion at all, so Steve tries to quash his frustration, and takes another tack. Sam's been more successful getting through to Bucky so far, made fewer missteps. It behooves Steve, he figures, to approach this as Sam might. 

Just a little bit, he regrets not bringing Sam into the store, but the feeling is brief-lived. Good counsel or no, Sam is a terrible window shopper, and Steve wants to be on the road as soon as possible. 

"Do you like this kind of fabric? Would you like something else?" 

"These are okay," Bucky confirms, holding the jeans in an awkward two-handed grip and waiting patiently for Steve to direct him elsewhere. While he's still unsure whether Bucky likes the things Steve is grabbing for him or is just accepting them because he thinks there are no other options, it's less jarring than the questioning half-answer was, so Steve lets the matter drop and keeps going. Eventually they've picked out a denim jacket to go with the jeans, two t-shirts, a belt, a pack of underwear and a pack of socks. Belatedly Steve wonders if they should've grabbed a basket or a cart to carry everything, but hindsight is perfect and if Steve carries that last item himself, Bucky isn't too overburdened with the rest. He nods his head toward the dressing room, encouraging Bucky to follow him there. 

Steve's not completely sure what Bucky's measurements are, but he aims, generally, for one size smaller than his own to start. Bucky is about the same height as Steve, but he's got a little less muscle mass on him. Hopefully Steve isn't too far off base, but the only way to know for sure will be to try their selections on. They encounter a young woman who is working as security in the fitting room area, sizes them up with unimpressed eyes, and unlocks one of the claustrophobic changing rooms for the two of them at the end of the row before returning to her station and resuming a half-finished jigsaw puzzle. She makes no audible comment, but Steve feels as though her dismissive glower said plenty enough. 

It's too cramped for them both, but they fit. Barely. Bucky doesn't seem eager to go in, but he doesn't complain. As for his own presence, Steve rationalizes that Bucky could slip into one of his dazes at any time, and therefore is better off with Steve close at hand just in case. Steve stands pressed against the door after they've both crowded in and says, "All right, let's see if any of these fit." 

Bucky complies without delay, shucking his borrowed clothes and stepping into the jeans, first. They fit, thankfully; the belt turns out a little too long, but it's functional. Both of the shirts are a size smaller than Steve had thought, so neither fits over Bucky's head. With a grumble for the wasted time, Steve checks the tags a second time to confirm his error, and tells Bucky to stay put. 

He's a little reluctant to leave Bucky in there and finds himself rushing against his better judgment once he's stepped back out into the racks again, privately worried that Bucky will have disappeared when he gets back. Steve considers it rude to leave the clothes out once tried on, so first he folds and puts the gray and blue t-shirts back where he'd found them. Only when he's satisfied that they are in the same condition they'd been when picked up does he begin rooting through the other offerings on the display for shirts of the size he'd been meaning to grab. There aren't any in gray or blue bigger than the mediums he inadvertently grabbed, so he ends up with a pair of matching red and white t-shirts in hand as he dashes back to the fitting rooms. When he tries to open the unit where he'd left Bucky, he finds it locked. 

"Bucky?" Steve knocks on the locked door, hoping it's nothing, just a setting that locks the doors whenever they swing shut. "Hey, I grabbed a couple other shirts. Open up so you can try one on." 

There's a long delay, long enough for Steve to imagine the worst. Then, from the other side of the flimsy door, Bucky makes a quiet, frustrated sound. The little deadbolt-style lock rattles a few times, clicks, and the door slowly comes open, much to Steve's relief. He offers one of the two shirts as he steps back inside, waits for Bucky to try it on, and calls it good when the shirt actually fits over Bucky's head, unlike its predecessor. Steve feels a little like he's limiting Bucky's options, but he reasons that Bucky _would_ say something if he was uncomfortable. 

"Good so far? Everything fit?" 

"Yes." Bucky nods, fidgeting a bit as he tries on the jacket over the red shirt. They're snug but they work well together. Most importantly, the jacket conceals the metal arm very effectively. All they could add to it, Steve thinks, is a pair of gloves to hide the hand. 

"Perfect. Get changed back into the others, and hand me those. Once we've paid for them you can change in the bathroom on our way out of the store." 

He's not sure if he's just wasting his breath or not, but Bucky does seem to do better with directions. Bucky nods in agreement, changes back into the sweatpants, over-sized t-shirt and hoodie, and scratches a little uncomfortably at the sleeve of the latter again. 

Steve collects their spoils. He's about to make a bee-line for the cashiers when he remembers that Bucky's still sporting his worn, threadbare shoes, lacking an alternative. The shoe section has more aisles for children than adults, but eventually Steve finds some sneakers that look like they should fit, and points to them with his free hand. Bucky has been eyeing the various boxes of shoes with trepidation, and the sneakers don't seem to be sparking a different reaction. 

"What do you think of these, Bucky? I think they come in your size." 

Bucky balks, but doesn't say why; refuses a black pair of Nikes, a bright-green pair of Reeboks, and some bland-looking white sneakers before he accepts a pair of boots that Steve points to almost as a joke. 

"What, these?" Steve asks, incredulous. He gets a nod in response, though, so shrugs and starts rooting through the various sizes available of that particular cut, taking out the middle size-- a 12-- to start. "All right, sit down over there and help me get your old boots off, and we'll see if these fit." 

"Okay." 

The boots Bucky is currently wearing are of much higher quality in material than the ones here in this store, but the new boots are much softer and Bucky doesn't express any distaste once they work out that he's actually a size 14 and he's able to try on a pair that fits. 

Though Bucky is fairly quiet throughout the process, Steve finds himself forgetting to worry about whether he gets a response or not, talking with Bucky as easily as if it was the good old days. 

"I'm surprised, honestly," he is laughing a little bit, surprised at himself, as he boxes up Bucky's new boots. Bucky is concentrating on pulling back on the old ones. 

Steve carefully arranges their stack of purchases to be relatively manageable so he can carry them to the check-out aisle. 

"You always were picky about your shoes, though. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you still are, right?" 

Bucky doesn't answer, but Steve likes to imagine that he's at least listening. 

"It's kind of a relief. I mean--" Steve hesitates, walking a bit slower as he realizes what he was about to say and feels a wave of guilt for it. "If you're still picky about your shoes, Buck, I gotta believe the rest of you's in there, somewhere. So-- I'm glad you wanted the boots." 

If he was expecting an answer, he's not sure what he'd thought Bucky would say. Instead, they come to a stop halfway to the checkout lanes, Bucky looking troubled and Steve trying to look comforting. 

"Come on," Steve sighs, recognizing an impasse when he sees one. "We shouldn't keep Sam waiting. Why don't you go ahead to the bathroom and I'll meet you there so you can change?" 

Checkout is uneventful; Bucky changes at Steve's behest, and they keep the spare clothes in the Walmart bags as they exit the store. In total, it takes about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes for them to accomplish their goal and leave the store again. 

When they get back to the car Sam is listening with a contented grin to Boney M on his MP3 player, which he has managed to hook up to the car using a USB port Steve didn't even notice when he was driving before. 

Sam turns the music down as they clamber inside. "Looking' good, Bucky! You feel a little better in those?" 

Bucky doesn't say anything, but he does nod, and he looks noticeably more comfortable in the new clothes. The jacket is of a slightly lighter color than the jeans, and the shirts they ended up with are stamped with the logo of a band Steve has never heard of, but it all suits Bucky well enough. Bucky's still acting a trifle off about the shoes, curling and uncurling his feet as he watches them, almost as if he's expecting something strange to happen to them. 

Steve watches him for moment, waiting until the song that was playing comes to an end and he can pause the music. "All right. Clothes, check. Breakfast, check. Everybody ready to go?" 

"Hell yeah," Sam quips, settling into the back seat overdramatically. "This is the lap of luxury." 

Bucky doesn't say anything, but he nods, and Steve decides that has to be enough. 

One of the arrangements they came to in the last few months is that Steve lets Sam have free reign with the music. It's not that Steve doesn't care about what plays, but he doesn't like multitasking while he drives if he can help it. _When_ they've even been driving at all. He and Sam have had their share of arguments, but it's never been about Sam's taste in music, which Steve finds to be superb. It doesn't hurt that Sam tends to like bands and singers from an era halfway between Steve's time and the present. The more current artists that Natasha had exposed him to had not been quite to his taste. 

Bucky has noticed a plastic bag that's caught on a blue mailbox across the street, and is staring at it as it flickers in the wind of cars passing by, not quite pulling free from where it's gotten stuck. He has closed his car door on his own this time, but still ignores his seatbelt. 

Steve sighs. 

"Buckle up, everybody," he announces, even though he and Sam have are already wearing theirs, and stalls, glancing over his shoulder to Sam. "So what's the fastest way out of town? Preferably heading north?" 

"Can't go south anyway, you'll drive into the ocean," Sam teases. "Hang on a second, I'll look it up." He procures his smartphone from his back pocket and, after a few taps on the screen, starts reading off directions. "Okay, there's a few ways from here. Could go north soonish, if you want to take the I-69. Trouble with that is, it's not too close to where we are. Other route's along the I-20." 

Steve nods, glancing at the mailbox Bucky is still staring at. The same coiled tension from before is evident in the set of Bucky's spine, the way he sits forward in his seat as if waiting for someone to give him the word to act. He's so focused on the bag that Steve wonders if he even hears them. 

Sensing that Sam is waiting for him to answer, Steve tries to figure out which of the two suggested routes is closer. 

"Entrance to the I-20's just up the street, isn't it? I think I saw some of the signs for it when we were driving here." 

"Yeah. Once you hop on that we actually stick to it past New Orleans. Kind of an East, then North route. Both routes have tolls, though, so do whatever you want, really." Belatedly, Steve realizes that Sam is watching Bucky too, subtly, out of the corner of his eye. "Just let me know which to track so I can give you directions." 

Admittedly, he wasn't paying a lot of attention to the television screens in the restaurant while they'd been eating, but Steve knows he'd caught a little bit of chatter about nearby car accidents backing up traffic for several miles. "Are you sure about taking the I-20? I seem to recall something about a five car pile-up." 

"Not according to googlemaps." Sam shrugs. "I can try for a third route if you want. All roads lead to Manhattan eventually, right?" 

"No, this is fine. But," Steve grins a little bit, putting the car in reverse. "I will say I told you so if it turns out to be slow." 

Sam chuckles wryly. "Like you would ever miss a chance to say I told you so." 

Steve glances at Bucky, who still hasn't moved, and tries one last time. "Bucky, you have to put your seatbelt on. We're not going anywhere until you're strapped in, okay?" 

He waits, and is glad to hear Sam chime in, saying gently, "Hey, talk to us, Bucky. What's the hold up? Something you want to talk about?" 

Bucky's breathing is coming a little too fast, but when he speaks at last, it's only to say, "Okay." 

The process of Bucky fastening his seatbelt isn't excruciating on its own, but watching him hesitate, after he's buckled it at his hip and lets go, that's hard. He looks betrayed, glances at Steve, then into the rearview mirror at Sam, and huddles against the door with a shudder. 

Steve wants to ask; he wants to know more than anything the _why_ of it, but he also wants to show his gratitude to Bucky for finally responding as he should have from the start. Reinforce positive behavior, encourage continued improvement. That's what they need to do, that's why Sam's so much better at this than Steve, because he knows what to say to show Bucky that he's safe. Steve tries to make himself smile, and says, "Thank you, Bucky." 

No answer. 

He pulls out of the parking space, and starts navigating Walmart's massive parking lot, slow and steady, avoiding throngs of pedestrians and fellow patrons on their way out to the street. As they're getting close to the exit that feeds back into a stoplight, Steve decides to start making small talk. 

"So I was thinking, if we're going to contact Stark, I should probably be the one to give him a call." 

"Well, _yeah_ ," Sam laughs, thumping the back of Steve's seat. "You actually know the guy! You send me, I'm gonna call the 800-number and be on hold for the next four hours." 

"Problem is he's insufferable to talk to." Steve makes a face at the thought, following traffic when the light flips green and, seeing the signs for the I-20 a little further up the street, turning left. "He might put me on hold for four hours just because he'd think it was funny, to be honest." 

"Sounds like you can't stand him," Sam says knowingly. 

Steve thinks of a rundown Greek restaurant in New York, and a bone-deep, full body exhaustion that had come from being knocked into six or eight buildings, as well as in close proximity to at least one explosion. He thinks of the moment they knew they'd won, and he thinks of Tony Stark crashing to the Earth again with his heart stopped. 

He grins in spite of himself. 

"Yeah," Steve says, still grinning. "He's the worst. But he's got his heart in the right place." 

Leaning forward a bit, Sam eyes the upcoming signs. "Looks like we're headed the right direction. It'll be that little tiny road up there." 

Sam points, and at first Steve can't even tell which road he means. There's one small side-street that appears to be a frontage road, though, simply labeled "ACCESS ROAD" that Steve presumes is the one Sam means. 

"I know it doesn't look like an entrance but you want to take that one. Trust me." 

"I do," Steve assures him, and turns right onto it, gradually accelerating until they find themselves suddenly merging onto the freeway. The frontage road is a little bumpy, and the seatbelts lock after one of the bigger ones, but all in all it's a smooth ride. 

Steve risks a glance over at Bucky once he's slipped into a middle lane of the road, and winces. He's not sure what he was expecting, but Bucky looks ashen, his eyes squeezed shut as he tugs at the seatbelt where it crosses his throat. Between the bump, their continued motion and the pressure he's exerting on it, the belt is locked a little tighter than, Steve guesses, is comfortable. 

He asks, "You okay?”, helpless to intervene while they’re still moving. It’s hard to say if Bucky’s uncomfortable with the seatbelt because he’s not familiar with them or because of something less innocent, but Steve was definitely a little off-put by them at first, so he hopes that’s all it is. 

“Too tight.” Bucky’s voice quavers, but he remains still, tolerating the pressure with an unhappy expression writ across his face. 

While it might be helpful to explain why seatbelts are used now, what they do, how they help make cars safer even in extreme situations, Steve tries to settle on just addressing what Bucky’s mentioned already. "Okay, try to relax. It's just a safety lock. It'll get looser again if you stop pulling on it for a few moments." 

Sam chimes in, "Kinda like a finger trap. You gotta relax into it to be able to get your fingers out, right?" 

Between the two of them, it seems to be enough; Bucky goes still and, after a few moments waiting for the lock's catch to release enough to give him more breathing room, he calms down, huffing a shaky sigh and gripping his knees tightly. 

"Bucky," Sam says, looking meaningfully at Steve via the rearview mirror. "Do you have claustrophobia at all? Get nervous when you’re in a small space?" 

He gets a nod in answer, and Steve picks up that line of questioning. "Feeling better now that the belt’s not locked, or is it still pretty bad?" 

Bucky half answers, then swallows down whatever he was going to say, nodding instead and pressing himself against the door tightly, keeping his eyes on the world outside. It doesn’t answer Steve’s question, but there's not much he can do except take Bucky at face value or make a point of calling him on it. That seems like it’ll just put unnecessary pressure on an already-anxious Bucky, so Steve reaches out to turn up the air conditioning. 

"You getting enough air back there, Sam?" Steve asks. He can’t tell at a glance what the external temperature is, but the stripe of sunlight across his left arm feels convincingly warm even under the blast of the vent on the dashboard. 

"Keep it up for a bit, at least." Sam tugs at the collar of his t-shirt dramatically. "I'm sure once we've been moving awhile it won't be so bad, then you can turn it back down." 

So Steve leaves it as is, blasting as much cold air through the cabin of the car as possible, and grins to himself when Sam announces that the music must go on, and leans into the front to unpause it. 

It takes a while to drive past city limits, but the number of cars does decrease drastically the further they go, until they’ve left Houston behind. Steve wonders if it’s strange to feel comforted by the relatively empty openness of the freeway. Here he doesn’t feel quite as overwhelmed by the world, if only temporarily. Steve lets himself relax, glancing over to see whether Bucky is feeling any better. Sam is singing along in the backseat-- he's pretty good and this IS his music—but unfortunately, Bucky is hunched against the door, shivering, hugging himself in stubborn silence. 

Worried, Steve tries to rekindle the conversation, asking gently, "Bucky? You doing okay over there?" 

Bucky shakes his head. It’s not that he’s not capable of talking, Steve has noticed, but talking does seem a little unfamiliar to him, frequently an afterthought when he realizes he can’t communicate through gesture. 

"What do you need?" Steve is still paying more attention to the road than Bucky, but he doesn't want to leave Bucky unattended, and he doesn't like how miserable that looks. "Anything we can do?" 

"No. I don’t think so." Bucky says, very slowly. Then, almost as an afterthought: “’S’Cold.” 

It's been a half hour by this point; Steve is cold too, and Sam hasn't been fanning himself for at least ten of those minutes. Sam answers first, waving a hand dismissively as he breaks off of singing mid-chorus. "I'm getting plenty of air back here, to be honest. Feel free to turn it down, if you guys are cold. I'll let you know if it gets too warm back here again." 

Steve does, turning the airflow down and the temperature back to the midpoint between cooling and heat. He's not sure what he's hoping for, but Bucky doesn't say anything, and Steve accepts that in stoic silence, waits for Sam to pick up singing again (he does, after a few minutes waiting and watching the pair of them). Bucky doesn't stop shivering, though, and Steve starts to worry. 

"Bucky-- you can close the vents, too, if you need to. Are you still cold?" 

Bucky doesn't respond, his sight set somewhere in the middle distance ahead of them. It's Sam who reaches out, tapping Bucky on his right shoulder since Steve couldn't reach from where he is if he tried. "Do you want to switch, Bucky? It’s not quite as cold back h--" 

"Nn--!!"

Bucky jerks in his seat, starts clawing at the door handle, and Steve is glad he has the foresight to throw on the hazard lights as he simultaneously slams on the brakes, shouting, "Bucky, no! Stop it. _Stop._ " 

"Hold up!” Sam chimes in, grabbing at both of Bucky’s shoulders to try to pull him back into his seat and away from the doorknob. “Bucky, don't, we're going like eighty miles an hour, man!" 

Steve hastily changes lanes to the right, pulling over and stopping as quickly as the brakes will let him. The car shrieks as it slides along the road and the cabin is briefly awash with the cloying stench of burned rubber when they finally come to a complete stop. 

As soon as they’re motionless, Sam lets go of Bucky’s shoulders. He immediately throws himself at the door again, fumbling it open and clawing at his seatbelt until he’s able to get it to disengage, stumbling out into the hot desert air and the dirt beside the shoulder where they’re now effectively parked. Bucky stands a few feet away, hunched over, gasping for air and holding himself until the heat seems to permeate his fear enough to stop his shivering. 

Other cars continue to fly past them, but Steve is too busy panicking to worry about them much as he slams the car into park, disengages his own seatbelt and leaps out. Sam follows, but his movements are slower, more cautious. He keeps his distance while Steve approaches Bucky. 

"Bucky?" 

Slowly, Bucky turns, eyeing Steve as if he’s never seen him before. There’s a moment when he has the sinking feeling they’re back at square one, that this is going to be more like visiting Peggy than Steve had thought. 

"It’s just us, Bucky. Okay? " Steve reached out, tries to pat Bucky on the shoulder, comfort him, anything. Shrugging off that touch with a hiss, Bucky backs away, nearly tripping over one of the little blackened shrubs that dots the side of the freeway here. 

"Don’t, " Bucky snaps. He looks surprised when Steve lifts his hands in a gesture like surrender, and doesn’t advance on him any further. His attention flickers between Steve and Sam, mouth set in a tight frown. 

Hoping that Sam might have better luck, Steve glances his way, too, as Sam reaches his side. "Do you think you can talk him down? " 

"I’m right here," Bucky says, sounding unsure of it himself. He pushes on through it, managing a simultaneously desperate and angry snarl. "I'm not your _fucking_ dog. " 

Steve winces, says, "Bucky," and Bucky rolls his shoulders again, turning away as if he plans to start running as fast as he can for the shore and leave the behind. Steve’s not sure what happens, exactly, but Bucky stops mid-step, left arm spasming briefly before it suddenly goes limp, hanging at Bucky’s side. Steve remembers what Bucky had said about damage, earlier, and hopes that it doesn't hurt, at the very least. "No, you're not. Of course you're not." 

"Don't," Bucky pleads, putting his right hand to his bicep, turning to face them again and backing up another step. Steve wants nothing more than to go to his side and help him back to the car, but Sam puts up a hand to stop him. 

"Look, Steve, just stay put a second, okay? Bucky," Sam says, stepping forward, keeping that warning hand up to motion for Steve to stay put. He does as told, but it’s hard. Bucky waits too, even though there’s mistrust written in his posture, in his eyes. "Hey, tell me what’s going on. Why’d you need to get out of the car? Gave us a pretty bad scare, you know." 

Bucky stays put while Sam talks, letting Sam approach him until the last two steps are all that remain between them. He goes tense again all over, flinching as Sam's foot comes down on the dirt. "Stop. Stop, please stop." 

Freezing in place, Sam nods in agreement to Bucky’s request—almost plea—and puts his hands in his pockets, glancing over at Steve to make sure he’s staying put. Steve grits his teeth, but nods tightly in silent affirmation that he’s not going to move without Bucky’s go-ahead. 

Sighing shakily, Bucky says in a tired undertone, “I’m sorry.” 

Sam shakes his head, keeping his distance but also maintaining that calm, completely unthreatening posture that Steve knows now is a very clever and carefully learned skill of Sam’s, developed as much out of the need for self-preservation in a hostile environment as it was for situations like this, where he just wants to help put someone who is frightened at ease. "It's okay. I know you're in a rough place right now. Steve does, too.” 

When Bucky looks his way, Steve nods again, this time to assure him that he’s still there and he’s not giving up because of a few setbacks. 

“Look, I don’t want you to feel trapped in the car, but there’s not very many ways to travel that aren’t going to be in a closed space like that,” Sam reasons kindly. “Airplanes are a lot worse because you can’t really get off the ship mid-flight, you know?” 

Bucky sets his jaw, and answers coldly, “If I had to, I would.” 

“Okay, sure, if that’s what you wanna do, that’s fine, I guess.” Lost for words for a moment, Sam scratches the back of his neck, glancing over to Steve and shrugging. “I mean, I wouldn’t, but I’d also splat like a pancake.” 

Neither Bucky nor Steve find the image funny; or at least, Bucky doesn’t crack a smile, and Steve feels like that’s too close to the actual risks that Sam has faced even in the last year for it to be a joke. 

“Tough crowd,” Sam sighs. 

“I don’t think I can do this.” Miserably, Bucky steps a little closer, enough that Sam could probably reach out and pat him on the back if he wanted to. He doesn’t, but Steve is glad to see Bucky trusting them enough to get closer again. “I don’t think I can be in the car.” 

Though Steve is grateful for the honesty, he can’t help being frustrated. He can’t see a solution to their problem either, but he’s resolved not to leave Bucky behind, no matter the cost. 

“What if you could sleep through the ride?” Sam suggests, the picture of reason. “We can pick up some sleeping pills at a pharmacy in the next gas stop. We can head back to Houston to do it if we need to, hell—but if that might help, we can try it, at least, right?” 

Slowly, Bucky turns the idea over. He seems as reluctant to consider it as Steve, at first, but when he’s had a few moments to think it over, he nods to Sam and lets himself be led back to the car. There’s a gas stop in about twelve miles, which isn’t too long a drive; Bucky agrees to wait until then, fastening his seatbelt gingerly and squeezing his eyes shut as Steve turns the car back on and prepares to pull back into traffic. 

"Bucky," Sam says, giving Steve a worried look. "You gonna be okay with Steve driving? After what you said back there--" 

"Fine," Bucky says in a numb, tired voice. 

Steve winces, restraining the urge to question whether Bucky's being honest with himself. "Bucky, I’m s--" 

"I said I'm fine," Bucky insists, in that same toneless voice. Steve and Sam trade worried looks, but Steve leaves it to Sam to do the talking. 

"All right. It won’t be too long before we get to where we’re headed. I’ll go with you to the pharmacy and help you pick out what kind of pills you want, okay?" 

Bucky nods, and before they can start, asks in that same monotone, "How do I close the vents?" 

Steve’s first urge is to just offer to do it for Bucky, but he bites that back, just nodding to the vents on the passenger side. "The little tab on the bottom of each vent controls how open they are. If you put it over to the right it'll be closed all the way; if you put it to the left, it'll be open all the way." 

Bucky closes his vents and cradles his still motionless metal arm in his lap. "I'm ready to go," he announces. 

Silent except for Sam's music still playing, Steve turns off the hazard lights, and drives back onto the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank to everyone who's been reading! I'm so sorry about the long wait. Ch. 5 got way out of hand in length; Steve just had...a lot to say.


	6. Tony

Times have been changing, drastically and chaotically, in the last year and change. There's been a significant amount of political upheaval in the last few months in particular, since SHIELD publicly shared a lot of information (some of which was NOT THEIRS TO SHARE). That bombshell of information payload had included a bunch of useful stuff about presumed-dead HYDRA, and the security breach been carried out by good old Steve Rogers and friend Natasha Romanov. They'd also taken out HYDRA's then-leader, three death machines that were apparently programmed to kill worthwhile people (like himself), and apparently disappeared afterwards.

Well, not quite. Since then, Black Widow has attended a press conference, flipped the bird to a bunch of boring and self-centered politicians, and publicly made it clear she'll show up if Tony calls in a totally Avenger worthy speech that he'd been proud of. _Then_ she'd disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Steve was actually in the hospital for a while-- Tony sent flowers and a bug for the room and totally listened for about ten minutes before he realized that Steve still hadn't even woken up and also had some asshole friend who was playing music in the room so the bug was useless anyway-- but recovered, and has since more or less disappeared. On top of all that, the media has cited the reason for the whole deconstruction of SHIELD to be the assassination of its board of directors and Nick Fury.

Tony has it on good authority (mostly his own suspicions, some possibly subtle confirmation from the unreadable Maria Hill, valued Stark Industries Employee and terrifying ex- spy as of April) that good ol' Nick is totally not dead. He hasn't told anyone, but he was glad to get some indication of that, because while he totally thinks Nick Fury is a manipulative liar, he kinda likes the guy. He was less excited to discover that Phil-- _no_ , Agent, the jerk, faking his own death probably-- was alive and had been just chilling out under Tony's nose once he recovered. The nerve! The gall! The absolute disregard for human decency! Anyway, the point is, Tony knows there's more to the story of the dissolution of SHIELD than there appears to be on the surface of things, but he hasn't delved into what that is yet, so all he has is his gut feeling, for now.

As for things in Stark Industries, Pepper has continued to kill it as his CEO, and seems to have handled the whole being a superhero temporarily thing pretty well. She has said on at least one or two occasions that it's nice not to be on the verge of exploding if things don't work out, but she also spends a lot of time communicating with Bruce and traitorous Phil, and has encouraged Tony to develop two new Iron Man suits in that way that kind of makes it sounds like she wouldn't mind wearing one. You know, if necessary to protect the planet from scary badguys. She recovered surprisingly quickly once the operation to make her normal, not-going-to-explode Pepper had finished, and is as sarcastic as ever.

Tony has been antsy since his own operation. It was great knowing that he could be fixed, in that sort of hypothetical, this will be useful later kind of way. It was not so great recovering from heart surgery, however, and even a year later he was geting tired more easily than he liked. It's gotten better since January, which helps immensely, Tony is a little on the bored side. Oh sure, bored is good when it means he's not having panic attacks. Who can complain about that? Not that Tony hasn't got a portfolio of complaints ready for every conceivable occasion. But he has abandoned more new designs of Iron Man than he's finished lately, and lately has thought quite extensively about what kinds of resources would be needed to put something in place to take over the parts of SHIELD that he actually agreed with. (Like, the saving the world parts.)

Therefore he was excited when, three days ago, he received a call from a pay phone and a familiar voice belonging to one Steve Rogers, Mister Nice Guy. The call went something like this:

"This is a private line, what if I was having phone sex? Who is it?"

Brief, mortified silence, and then a perfect mixture of audible distaste and creeping curiosity had colored the answer: "--Tony."

Tony had wanted to wait him out and see if he couldn't help but ask if this was really a line Tony used for phone sex or not, but he was too pleased to hear from Captain America ahead of a wave of, he expected, news reports about some new dire thing that had happened to said Captain. So he'd said, "Captain Boyscout!"

A beat had passed during which it was shocking that Steve didn't just hang up on him. Tony tried to be slightly more diplomatic.

"--hi!"

"Just-- Nevermind. I'm on my way there with a couple of friends. Can we meet you in that tower of yours?"

"It's not _my_ tower," Tony pointed out, the picture of diplomacy. "I mean, it was, but it's the Avengers' tower now. You _are_ an Avenger, aren't you, Steve? So you can come over, sure. The kitchen's on the fifteenth floor, you can jog up if you want to work out before you have a snack."

A heavy sigh. "And my friends?"

"Sure. I guess. Are they also Avengers? Possible future Avengers? It's kind of a requirement."

Pepper had interjected, quite unfairly, "Just bring them, Steve. Good to hear from you, by the way. You doing all right?"

"Hey." Tony had glowered, but of course it did nothing.

"Fine," Steve did not sound fine, and so Tony has become increasingly curious between that call three days ago and now. "I'll see you soon, then. Thanks, Tony."

In three days, Tony can get a lot done, especially when he lacks other things to focus on. He has, since the call, studied Captain America's history-- recent and otherwise-- so thoroughly that Phil would probably be proud. He also spends more time going through the news about SHIELD's dissolution and HYDRA's exposure than he had before, thoroughly studies it so he can extrapolate possibilities for why Steve would bother to come to visit Tony.

He learns a lot. The most important thing is the fact that Steve's first friend is probably Sam Wilson, who was the guy from the hospital. Tony isn't sure if he likes or hates this guy, since the music _did_ interfere with his bug. Knowing Steve though, he didn't miss out on anything interesting anyway, so he's inclined to give Sam a buy. Sam is also familiar with the FALCON tech that Tony admires from the war over in Afghanistan, so he might even be-- hope of hopes-- interesting.

The other friend, however, remains a complete mystery. It's worse because it _could_ be Natasha, but if it had been he can't see why Steve wouldn't have risen to the bait about his friends also being Avengers, so Tony doesn't think it's her. Still, barring that, who else could it be? Steve isn't the most social of guys. He was working pretty heavily for SHIELD, so it could be an ex-SHIELD mook, maybe. Except Tony can check the records that were exposed on all of those that are still alive (quite a few died in the scuffle, actually), and none of them have been MIA like Steve has. Which leaves Tony with a giant question mark as to the identity of person number three.

Unless it's Natasha. But it probably isn't. But maybe it is?

Tony laments about this puzzle excessively to everyone who will listen, even those who are trying not to. He says to Pepper when she comes to check on him in his workshop, "He's _cranky._ He doesn't even _have_ any friends."

Pepper snorts. She is so over his arbitrarily mid-conversation interjections out of nowhere. Pity. "You're the cranky one."

"I," Tony argues gamely, "am eminently charming and loveable. Steve puts on a good face for the camera but he's _cranky._ "

He sniffs.

" _You_ wouldn't know, you didn't ever fight any alien invasions with him."

Later, when he's talking with Maria Hill about something in R&D that smacks of corporate espionage, he blurts out, "I mean, who would even put up with him? He's not any fun at all."

Maria gives him a raised eyebrow and picks up where she'd left off.

He clarifies. "Captain America. You know, Mr. Boring."

"He seemed pretty interesting a few months back," she answers easily. Her face gives away nothing, but she has a very cold smile on for Tony now, so he lets the matter drop, at least with her.

Now, Tony isn't sure exactly how Steve is traveling, but he assumes that it is not by plane, because it has been three days and there have been no exciting mystery visitors at the Avengers tower as of yet. He is currently playing with a new, _new_ new Iron-Man design in the workshop because Pepper will be in meetings for several more hours and, well, _bored_. Tony fusses with the plating on the gloves, worrying that even banded like this they won't be flexible enough, privately debating whether that call had been an on-foot kind of warning or more of an "I'm taking the Greyhound." Or. Maybe Steve had stolen a car?

He thinks that would be awesome, if only because he could tease Steve about it. Someone as straight-laced as that would have to have a problem with stealing, and yet-- it's beautiful. It becomes Tony's favorite possible explanation. He wonders if maybe it's Natasha after all. Truth be told he still doesn't like her a ton because she's smarter than she lets on and a lot more cutthroat than Tony, but she seems like the kind of person who might teach Steve how to steal a car.

She would also be someone Steve might not want to mention over any phone connection, no matter how secure, considering that press conference and all the offended politicians from it, so that seems very plausible. Yes, Tony does kind of like the idea of getting to see them both again. Not that he'll admit it out loud. Ever.

He makes no secret, however, of the fact that he is mildly disappointed when a rental car from an Enterprise out in Houston pulls up and three probably masculine figures step out of the car. Not even a stolen vehicle! And no Natasha.

Tony might have to actually put out a call for the Avengers after all.

He focuses on what he does have, trying to identify the three figures as they get their bearings. The straight-backed no-fun looking one is obviously Steve Rogers, Captain America, Golden Boy. Steve stands proudly and easily from the back seat. He's flanked by Sam Wilson, who has a casual way of walking and demeanor that Tony immediately likes.

The third visitor is a brooding palette-swap of Thor in Metal-Band gear, as far as Tony can tell, which is a little weird. Definitely not Natasha, then. Quasi-Thor looks like he's trying to get back his land-legs after a long voyage at sea, and after closing and locking his own door, Steve turns to speak with him, evidently offering a shoulder to lean on while Quasi-Thor gets himself together.

Quasi-Thor is having none of it, and staggers forward. "Rejected. Ouch, Steve," Tony mumbles to himself, around the spare bolt in his teeth. He turns back to his work for a second, popping the bolt into place at the wrist joint and tightening it as much as he can by hand before he sets the glove down and dusts his hands off, turning back to the security feed.

The trio of visitors is approaching the front door now, Sam in the lead, Steve bringing up the rear. Steve seems to be in protective mode, his attention largely focused on Other-Thor. Sam Wilson is keeping a watchful eye on Other-Thor, too-- clearly talking to him as he glances back once, and Other-Thor straightens, walking a little bit more confidently-- but Sam acts a lot less like he's afraid someone will shoot the guy than Steve.

As for Other-Thor, he's carrying himself a little oddly, like his left arm is hurting him on top of what Tony presumes to be motion sickness. As soon as they enter the lobby and pass through the scanners on the first floor, heading to the elevator, Tony gets to find out why.

The guy's whole left arm is made of interlocking metal plates and an energy core. It's not armor, it's a prosthetic. Which means that Tony finally knows who he is.

The Winter Soldier.

He thinks maybe he saw a couple of mentions of the guy in the files that he stole from SHIELD back during the Battle for New York. According to what he'd read, the guy was a ghost-- practically a myth-- who'd surfaced now and then over the years in reports from SHIELD operatives after missions gone bad. But some of those stories had been decades old, and the Winter Soldier looks as young as Steve does. Tony also can't figure out why Steve Rogers, Mr. USA, would be hanging out with an assassin who, by all accounts, has shot some of Steve's current friends and possibly killed several of them. It's embarrassing to be so deeply and immediately interested in a person he's never met, but Tony can't help wondering what else SHIELD and HYDRA managed to keep secret, since none of the files that were released publicly had anything concrete to do with this guy. His very existence definitely screams HYDRA, or at the very least SHIELD malcontents, and since he's walking around and obviously not a mirage, Tony is willing to bet there were files on him somewhere, even if they've been wiped since the scuffle earlier in the year. This is useful information to have, but it doesn't sate Tony's curiosity.

Considering the possibilities, Tony can't help theorizing why Steve would have brought the guy in. Maybe they've captured him and he's going to spill a bunch of juicy HYDRA secrets. That would explain why he's stumbling around like someone recently drugged. Then again, maybe he's turning himself in. Or, maybe they're all being mind-controlled by some sneaky member of the HYDRA robotics team who wants to get into Tony's workshop without raising any alarms. Tony tests that last theory (just because it sounds ridiculous on paper doesn't mean it isn't possible, Tony should know) by piping a call down to them as they enter the elevator. "Steve! Wondered when you'd get down here. Evening there, Sam." He grins to himself when Sam Wilson gives a start, looking around the elevator with a wry expression.

"Oh, you know me, huh?"

"I know _of_ you," Tony clarifies generously, chuckling back. "Your service record says great things about you in theory, but look at the company you're keeping."

"Tony," Steve says warningly.

He knows that that tone is supposed to have a message attached to it, sort of like, 'just back off'. The problem is, Tony hears 'this is a button you can push, want to see what happens?' and his answer is always, always _yes_. "Something wrong, grandpa? Besides, I'm a little worried that you brought the _Winter Soldier_ here. Please tell me he doesn't have a gun on you right now. It'd be pretty embarrassing if he could hold you both hostage, to be honest, but I wouldn't put it past the guy, after what I've heard. And I mean, I haven't even heard much."

Counter to what Tony might expect from somebody as feared and part-legend as said mystery man, the guy continues to list to the side as the elevator moves, confusedly looking around the elevator as if he is seeking a face in the paneling there to go with the voice he hears. Sam Wilson maintains that same appearance of being completely unfazed, but Steve's clenching his fists and looking kinda menacing. Maybe that should make Tony feel bad. Maybe the answer is right there waiting to be found and Tony's just not looking at it the right way.

Well, Steve should know better. Tony and unpushed buttons are not a thing that happens.

"What have you heard?" Steve's voice has an edge to it that has the exact opposite effect intended.

"Well, that he's not real, that he has a metal arm, and, oh yeah, that he's like the world's most dangerous assassin. I'm serious about the gunpoint thing. If you're being held hostage I'd consider it a required part of being an Avenger to at least give me a clue before you get me hostaged with you, you know. Fair's fair and all."

Sam Wilson just laughs, which makes Tony like him in spite of his rule about not liking anyone who thinks Steve Rogers is cool enough to voluntarily hang out with. (Maybe that rule is kind of fake anyway). The Winter Soldier seems to be getting agitated, but not like he's angry-- maybe just uncomfortable in the elevator?

Said elevator's doors slide open, and Tony realizes that they're on his floor and approaching the workshop. He hastily adds, again, "Hey hey! Not another step. Hostages or not?"

" _Not._ " The word comes out in such tight no-nonsense irritation that Tony wonders if Steve might've hurt himself saying it.

"Oh. Okay. Good." He's not sure he wants them to see his workshop, though the promise of not being hostages frees him up to get curious about that metal arm their guest is sporting. It looks like something he'd design, but it's definitely not his. "Stay there. I'll come out. It's uh--" he looks around the workshop and scowls at his eight or nine in-progress projects sprawling messily on the various tables and two of the benches. "Yeah. I'll be right out."

Tony closes the line before Steve can get in another word and powers down a couple of the half-built prototypes he'd been fiddling with, steps into his shoes, and wanders out into the hall. 

The fifteenth floor of the tower was originally supposed to just be for parties. Instead, Tony has redesigned it to act as a welcoming area and meeting room in the center of the floor by the elevators, with a string of workrooms in a horseshoe along the east, south, and west walls. There's a big table that can put up a holo-display in the middle of the meeting room, a fantastic view of the city out the windows, a little kitchen with a bar that Tony keeps fully stocked, and his new workshop along with the workrooms as backups in case he runs out of space. He knows he eventually will, and as the only Avenger currently _using_ the tower regularly, he has been doing what he likes with it fairly unchecked. Some of the workrooms are filled to bursting with spare parts for various Iron Man suits.

Once Tony's walked the length of the hall, following the full horseshoe out into the welcome area, he approaches his visitors with a confident stride, carefully working to look neither hurried nor intimidated. They are all taller than him, which is annoying, though not by much. Sam Wilson is almost Tony's height, even. Steve's agitation doesn't actually worry Tony, if only because Tony has too much respect for his strength of character to think that Steve would do anything dangerous over being teased. This doesn't change the fact that Steve cuts an imposing figure.

He sizes up the third member of their odd little party, and holds out his left hand to shake intentionally. "So. You're the Winter Soldier." Tony grins in challenge, waiting for the guy to shake his hand so he can get a feel for how the metal arm works. He is not disappointed; though it seems to take a while, fake-Thor here eventually seems to recognize that he's being rude, and slowly reaches out to take Tony's hand.

The grip is a little stronger than a human grip, but it mimics the sensation surprisingly well. Its motions seem clumsy and slow, as if something isn't functioning properly in the internal gears, but it's hard to tell if that's from damage to the prosthesis or a side effect of being sedated. Tony wants to ask about that so badly, but given Steve's moody behavior thus far, he probably won't get to find out until later on that particular detail. Tony meets the Winter Soldier's eyes for a moment while he keeps his grip as strong as  he can with just an ordinary human hand, and tries to make sense of what he sees there. His primary questions are who this person was, why he needed a prosthetic, why he got this particular one, how, and since oh yeah this guy's a shadow on the last century, known for being a brutal killer--

"Why are you here?" Steve looks offended, and Tony turns to him with an eyeroll. "I'm sorry, was getting visited by strangers with a known history of murder more commonplace in the distant past or something? This is a legitimate question!"

Steve narrows his eyes, probably intending to be menacing, and glares at Tony, who is still holding onto the Winter Soldier's metal hand and now pushes up the sleeve of the guy's jacket to check out the pattern of the interlocking pieces that make up the whole. He can see out of the corner of his eye that the guy is startled, but it's Steve who responds with anger at Tony's blatant disregard for personal space.

"I brought him here because he said there's some damage to his arm. You're the best guy I know for mechanics, so I thought you _might_ be interested in helping him."

Tony does like having his ego stroked, but he balks, gets greedy (maybe he'd do it for free but he doesn't like for people to just assume that), and gets a little annoyed, too. "Excuse _you_ , but it costs money to maintenance mechanical arms from a mystery lab."

" _You_ want _money_?"

Looking between them all and settling on Sam Wilson, who looks like he's about as practical and unflappable as Pepper, Tony raises one eyebrow, says deadpan, "I'm sorry, I'm sure I didn't hear that right because it _almost_ sounded like you were asking me to do this out of the goodness of my _heart_."

Sam shakes his head, but doesn't join in the fun or respond in any other way. Disappointing. But, well, Tony can't blame him. 

"Tony." There's that _tone_ again, and really, Steve didn't like Tony last time, so shouldn't he know better? Tony swings around to lock glares with Steve. It actually makes him suddenly nervous, because Steve looks disgusted with him and that's the closest Tony's ever come to actually thinking Captain America is capable of being scary.

He still parrots back, "Steve." He just can't help it.

Steve scoffs, shaking his head. "The goodness of _what_ heart," Tony catches him muttering under his breath. Then, more loudly, Steve says, "I'm not expecting anything, Tony. But you're the best person I know to have a look at that."

This is better, and Tony nods, feigning modesty. "Yes. That's true."

Steve spreads his arms in a frustrated, melodramatic shrug. "Look, I don't know what you want. There's gotta be something, though. If I can get it for you, or do something for you, I will. Name your price, and just-- please help. Okay?"

The Winter Soldier, who until now has been pretty stoic and calm about Tony checking out his prosthetic arm, furrows his brow, pulling away a little bit. "--I don't--" he starts, stopping with a frustrated frown and falling silent again. He looks more grizzled than Thor, somehow, despite having less facial hair. Maybe. Is Tony misremembering Thor with a gigantic beard? Well, anyway.

"You don't what?" There's a lot going on here that Tony doesn't know about, but he reasons that if he keeps prying, eventually he'll figure it out.

"Tony," Steve says again, in that so-tempting tone of disapproval that spurs Tony to the worst, most mean-spirited kinds of rebellion.

"Let the man speak for himself!" is Tony's counter, and he turns a look that is pretty much a dare on Steve, waits to see what he'll do. He doesn't do anything.

So Tony eyes the Winter Soldier again, and releases the metal arm entirely, holding his hands up as if in surrender.

"You don't what?"

It looks like it's still an effort for the Winter Soldier to focus, let alone make his mouth form coherent words. He keeps his eyes averted, and when he answers, he speaks very slowly. "I don't want someone else to pay for me."

Deeply intrigued, Tony spares half a glance for Steve's conflicted expression, and Sam's obvious surprise, keeping most of his attention right on the wild card in their midst. "Is that so?" He looks the guy up and down, and yeah, he's a little intimidated by what he sees there, but he's sure as hell not going to admit it. He blusters, "And what could you do for me?"

This is apparently a hard question for the guy, because he doesn't have an answer right away. Tony can feel Steve trying to work up to insisting that he'll do whatever it is that Tony demands of them, but before he can, Winter Soldier speaks up again. "If you need something done, I can do it."

"How vague and moderately threatening!" Tony quips, chewing his lower lip worriedly. "Mm- I don't really know what you're good at. How could I possibly give you something to do if you might be terrible at it?"

"Give me a mission and I'll get it done," the Winter Soldier promises, sounding a trifle unsure of himself but determined to muscle on through anyway.

Steve interjects, saying, "Bucky, you _don't_ have to do that--" at the same time that Sam says,

"I can help, if you want."

Tony, however, is a font of curiosity. "What's your track record, though? You say mission like I should know what you mean."

"To kill enemies of peace," says the Winter Soldier, in a too-calm voice that feels like it's a conditioned response. Tony remembers sounding a little off like that when they wanted him to read his own ransom note. It's a disturbing memory, but it makes Tony look again, note the weariness in Steve's clenched jaw, the worry implicitly in the way Sam Wilson is hovering, ready to intervene if necessary. He can't say for sure, but looking at the Winter Soldier, he sees sleeplessness, exhaustion, disorientation. Whatever happened is probably nothing like what happened to Tony, but he can related to the feeling of displacement.

Instead of joking that everybody's an enemy of peace just by being human, Tony asks, "Like who? What was your last mission?"

A heavy silence falls in answer, with Steve looking angry at his feet and Sam looking worried at Steve, now, too. The Winter Soldier, though, he meets Tony's eyes without flinching, and admits a little haltingly, "I failed my last mission, sir."

"Whoa, I got upgraded to sir."

"Tony, damn it--!"

"What was it, though? Protect HYDRA or something?"

" _Tony_ \--!"

While he doubts Captain America would kill him, Tony realizes that he totally believes Captain America would get into a fistfight with him and that Tony really doesn't want to experience said theoretical fistfight. He sidesteps to the left when Steve advances one step on the right, maneuvering to put the Winter Soldier slightly between himself and Steve.

"To kill Captain America." The Winter Soldier says softly, looking troubled, now, and Tony looks at Steve incredulously, silently demanding to know whether Steve has any sense of self-preservation at all. Steve evades Tony's questioning gaze, keeping most of his attention on the Winter Soldier instead. 

"Bucky, you don't have to say anymore if you don't want to. He's not your commanding officer." Steve gives Tony a warning look, trying to garner some kind of agreement not to mislead the Winter Soldier by playing into that misunderstanding.

Wait, _Bucky._ Three days ago that wouldn't have meant anything to Tony, but he's had three days to become a Captain America expert. Bucky was Steve's folksy nickname for James Buchanan Barnes, fellow low class guy and partner on the front in the war. Barnes was the one who'd died on a train or falling off of a train or something (okay so being an expert might not extend to memorizing exact dates and things, so what).

For a moment Tony wonders who dubbed Bucky the Winter Soldier, and whether that means he was kept in cryo-stasis too. He quips, "Well, lucky for us you messed that one up, isn't it?"

Barnes's brow furrows, and he hangs his head. "Yes."

There's a lot going on here, some of which Tony knows he's missing out on because even Steve and Sam probably don't know about it. Tony has a choice to make, and mere split seconds before Steve launches into an angry tirade that will, honestly, just make Tony feel like he's being taken for granted. That's no good because it'd make Tony defensive, and Steve angrier, and meanwhile Sam and Barnes would be standing there in the middle of a petty argument, with one of them possibly actually needing help. So before it can go further, Tony says, directly to Barnes, "All right, I'll have a look. You, come with me. You," he points at Steve, and squints. "You make dinner. You-- you can help him if you want or come with us if you want," he says the last to Sam, gracious and, to Tony's way of thinking, downright friendly.

"Oh, well, in that case I think I'd better stay here, unless you want boiled cabbage for dinner." Sam laughs a bit as he offers his own hand to shake. Tony takes it gladly, and makes a mental note to see if he can't convince Sam to join the Avengers by maybe drafting up a prototype copy of that winged-backpack Tony'd avidly read about in the guy's military record.

"Tony Stark. Nice to meet you, Sam."

"Likewise," Sam says. He gives Barnes a searching look, and turns to Steve, even as he continues speaking to Tony. "You guys'll be close, right? In case you need any help with anything."

Tony nods, pointing at the corridor from which he came. "Closest door on the left. You can't miss it. Oh, and Jarvis can help you find it if you need him to. Jarvis!"

"Yes sir?"

"Make sure to help Sam and Steve find their way around if they need anything. I'm gonna take Lieutenant Barnes here to one of the empty workrooms."

Steve shoots Tony a withering look for that. "You'd better not--"

"Check out the metal arm you specifically brought your very important friend to me so I could look at?" Tony finishes for him, unable to keep the barb out of his tone but still unsure what Steve's problem is.

For a second it looks like they're back in possible fistfight territory, until Sam intercepts Steve with a quiet murmur and a hand on his shoulder to turn him toward the bar and guide him that way. That leaves Tony with Barnes to lead around like a lost duckling. It feels like a surprisingly big responsibility.

He motions for Barnes to follow him, and starts walking back the way he came. "So Barnes-- you want me to call you Barnes or Winter Soldier or Lieutenant or what?"

The question seems to throw the guy for a loop. He misses a step, and is a little slow to recover. Tony notices, after they pass the first workroom's sealed door, that there's still a slight unevenness to Barnes's gait. "Bucky," he says. "Bucky's fine."

"Really? I really sort of figured that was one of those names you got stuck with but never like, you know?"

Judging from his expression, Barnes-- 'Bucky'-- doesn't have the faintest clue what Tony means. Maybe things were just really different in the 40's.

"Never mind. So tell me what's going on with your arm. I'm gonna guess it was damaged, based on that handshake. How'd that happen?"

As they reach the beginning of the hall, Tony motions to the first door on their left to make it clear where he's going, and opens the door without being too grudging about having to actually unlock it himself instead of asking Pepper to do it. It's musty inside, strong with the scent of stale oil. This room is replete with four half-finished Iron Man suits and very little else. There are a couple of chairs to work from, some tools lying around, but Tony hasn't been back in here for at least a month and it shows. The lights come up automatically as they enter, and Tony calls to Jarvis again. "Jarvis, can you scan the prosthesis on my friend Bucky here? Use the lobby scan to grab the framework and fill in the details from there."

"Of course, sir, straightaway."

Tony sits down on one of the chairs, and after a moment, Bucky takes the other, sitting awkwardly. He still seems out of it, but there's nervousness underlying it, too. "It was damaged during the mission," Bucky says, answering Tony's question even as he starts to slip out of the denim jacket and white t-shirt he was wearing. It seems strange at first, but since Bucky stops on his own, Tony comes to the realization that he's just trying to get his arm bare so it will be possible to examine. It's easier to feel around the little grooves between the various parts with nothing covering the arm, so Tony doesn't complain.

He does clarify Bucky's answer, reminding them both of which mission it was. "Fighting Steve?"

Bucky hesitates, looking stricken. "--Yes. I--" Tony is fiddling with the catch that seems to lock the elbow, and Bucky flinches, as if feeling it come undone causes him pain. Curious. Is that just one of those psychosomatic things, or--? "The ship was crashing, I got trapped under debris when the structural integrity started to give."

Tony nods. That makes sense to him for how something as sturdy as this piece of work could have been damaged. There's still the intriguing question of how the need for the arm came to be, and what else came along with the prosthesis. Is Bucky a super soldier like Steve is? Is he super strong? The possibilities pique his curiosity further, but now's still not the time to ask those questions, not yet. Priorities! Priorities. Tony is conscious of the fact that Bucky's starting to breathe a little harder, and can't help making a comparison to himself. Tony still has panic attacks over stupid things like the floor being cold on his bare feet. He'll feel it close over him like a sheet of black dark chill and end up on the floor reminding himself that he's still okay, he's still here -- on Earth even! -- and hating his hands for shaking for hours after.

The sad fact is, Tony knows too little of what's happened to Bucky beyond his own wild speculation to have a clue what's pushing him like this. If it's something in the room triggering him, maybe they could get Bucky outside and he can deal with what's happening. If it's what they're talking about, though, then maybe Tony shouldn't ask further questions at all.

"He got me out of the debris," Bucky's voice wavers, and Tony carefully takes his hands off the elbow joint he'd been fiddling with, waiting for Bucky to finish sharing. "He wouldn't fight me, and--"

Tony wants to back away, get out of Bucky's personal space, but that troubled expression is looking for empathy, and unfortunately Tony's the only person here. He holds his ground, waits. 

"I know him." Bucky stands up suddenly, flexing his hands. The metal one responds with a noticeable delay of three seconds, and he grits his teeth az he slowly extends its fingers. "I don't remember him, but on the bridge of that ship--"

"Yeah?"

Whatever it was he was about to say doesn't quite make it out. He cries, but silently, like he doesn't know why he's doing it, doesn't want to give in to it. He's still breathing too hard, and all Tony can think is that the _way_ Bucky's talking about that last mission tells him more than the words themselves do.

Jarvis's nonplussed voice says quietly, "Diagnostic complete, sir. Shall I project into the room so you can analyze?"

Tony nods shortly, then remembers it's Jarvis and adds, "Yes. Yeah. Do that, Jarvis, thank you." He turns back to Bucky, adding, "You don't remember him, you said?"

Bucky nods, at about the same time Jarvis starts creating a life-sized holographic replica of the prosthetic arm Bucky's been outfitted with, been struggling to use since he arrived at the Avengers Tower and letting hand limp when he can.

And Tony sees why.

It's horrific, like having an arc reactor he built himself inside his own heart was horrific.

The arm's been completely replaced, all right, and it runs on an internal power source not unlike the arc reactors Tony designs. Childish compared to his work though, and ultimately the power source is finite. Eventually, even undamaged, without tune-up-- probably a year or two from now-- the arm Bucky carries around would be a non-responsive hunk of metal plating. The pieces are malleable, not in form specifically, but in their layout. The arm can reconstitute itself, Tony theorizes, with gaps in critical locations filled by pieces from less critical places (say Bucky loses a finger, for example). The whole thing is quite elegant, in its own awful way, and it doesn't surprise Tony that something so complicated would need a direct interface with Bucky's brain to be able to actually operate.

That's where the damage is. Thirty two tiny wires run from that metal shoulder up through Bucky's clavicle, along the back of his neck to a plate installed along the left side of Bucky's skull. Several of those wires are torn, probably from being crushed under debris, at the juncture of metal and skin, right along the shoulder. More explicitly, the sheaths coating the wires and protecting them from corrosion (and Bucky from them) have been torn. Tony can only hope they're made of some material that isn't particularly harmful or invasive to the body internally, since he would need a surgeon to check this work and hasn't exactly got one hanging around in his pocket. At its heart, he can at least sum up the problem quickly. The metal of the wires is exposed to Bucky's bloodstream. That's why his arm's not quite working.

 _There's no way_ , Tony thinks, in a part of himself that is totally calm about all of this new, stomach-churning information, _that you could install something like this in someone who wasn't willing_.

"Bucky," he says, managing to keep his voice even, managing to reach out to the holographic diagram and pull it apart piece by piece, learning about it as he works with the replica, figures out what goes where. "Did you agree to have your arm replaced?"

Bucky shakes his head.

"That's what I thought." Tony traces the wires that are damaged, and pulls his hands wide to expand them, zooming in several hundred times. "See this? These are what's damaged. They're part of what lets you control the arm like it's part of you."

Bucky blinks rapidly, eyes misting over, and bites his lip, nodding hesitantly at first.

"They're also why your arm is hurting you." Tony doesn't phrase it like a question; he waits to see if Bucky contradicts him, and is unsurprised when Bucky doesn't. "How long has your arm been damaged?"

"Since the mission. But it wasn't bad before."

"Before?"

Shifting slightly, Bucky runs both hands through his hair, as if trying to think. Maybe he is. "Before Sam and Steve found me."

"Do you want it fixed?"

It's hard to do, but Tony makes himself wait, while Bucky works that one out; he waits, while Bucky breathes harder, faster, gasping like he's not actually getting any air; while Bucky drops back down into the chair, gripping his knees and shaking, bent over them like he's going to start retching.

Tony bites his lip, and gets down on the floor, crouching low so he can kind of see Bucky's face. "No strings attached. I can fix it. I'll only do it if you want me to."

The only answer Bucky manages to stammer out is, "N-no doctors," and then he's crying, really crying, quietly and in abject terror, barely able to breathe.

Tony doesn't say anything, because talking through his panic attacks doesn't work so well for him, but he puts his hand on Bucky's not-a-robot-hand hand, trying to be supportive.

They stay like that for a good ten minutes before Bucky's breathing changes, switching from those short, shallow shrieking gasps to one long, great gulp of air. Soft, shaky but more stable breathing. Another gulp, a shaky sob, and then the relative silence of someone too tired to cry anymore.

Tony says, as gently as he can, "Hey, real quick, what's something that makes you happy?"

Bucky looks at him in a mixture of gratitude and incredulous confusion. "--?"

"Come on, anything. Like, know-it-all kids make me happy. And shiny things. What about you?"

It's a bit before Bucky can respond; during the interim, Tony keeps throwing out stuff he likes-- fast cars, he says earnestly, nodding like this is a deep secret. Love fast cars. Especially with my window down. I feel like a king. It's great.--until Bucky says, in a low, rough voice, "Burgers."

Tony feels a deep and instant kinship with this man. "You know, I so get that? There's something really reassuring about burgers." He claps Bucky on the real shoulder (he shudders to think how painful the other one must be). "You deserve a burger, then. In fact, I will order out and get us burgers. All of us. Okay?"

Confused, Bucky looks at him as if trying to gauge what the price for this is.

"Totally free of charge. You want one, don't you?" Tony waits, making it clear that he won't go buy anything of the sort if Bucky _doesn't_ want them. After all, Steve Rogers is cooking right now, and that's got to at least be worth a laugh. He might even be good at cooking, Tony has no idea.

He's very gratified when, still shaky, Bucky answers, "Yes. Yes, please."

Offering him a hand to help him back up to his feet, Tony flashes a lopsided smile. "Great. Let's go let Steve and Sam know they're off the hook for cooking."


End file.
